AI Summary Helper – Summarize Web Pages & PDFs (BYOK, Ollama)

AI Summary Helper is a free, open-source Chrome extension that summarizes any web page, PDF or YouTube video in your language, with your own AI key (OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek) or a fully local model through Ollama. It turns what you read into a private, searchable library with highlights, follow-up questions, a knowledge graph, reading analytics, an RSS reader and Send to Kindle. No account is needed for your own key or Ollama, and your articles stay on your device. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✨ WHAT IT DOES IN ONE MINUTE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ - Press Ctrl+Shift+E (⌘+Shift+E on Mac) or right-click → "Summarize this page". - The summary streams into the side panel, popup or an in-page sidebar, in any of 41 languages. - Key sentences light up on the page as "ghost highlights", so you can jump straight to the evidence. - Ask follow-up questions; answers quote the passage they come from. - Everything is saved to your History: search it, star it, see how topics connect, export it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔑 YOUR AI, YOUR CHOICE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Pick the model that fits your budget and your privacy needs: - Own API key (BYOK): OpenAI, Google Gemini, Mistral AI or DeepSeek. You pay the provider per request, usually a few cents a month, instead of a flat subscription. - Fully local with Ollama: run Gemma, Llama, Qwen or any other Ollama model on your own computer, or point AI Summary Helper at a self-hosted Ollama endpoint on your network. No API key, no cost per request, and page content never leaves your machine. - byphil Cloud (optional): no key and no setup. Sign in with your email and a one-time code and get a small free daily allowance; upgrade to Pro for unlimited summaries. Your own key and Ollama need no account at all. The full source code is public on GitHub, so you can check exactly what the extension sends and where. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📄 SUMMARIZE WEB PAGES, PDFs AND YOUTUBE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ - Web pages and news articles: clean extraction of the article text, without menus, ads or cookie banners. - PDFs: research papers, reports and manuals opened in a Chrome tab, including local files. - YouTube videos: summaries built from the video's captions, so you can decide whether a 40-minute talk is worth your time. - Summary length: "Auto" scales with the length of the article, or set a fixed length from 20 to 2,000 words, with a short, standard or long bias. - Prompts: presets such as Technical Deep Dive, Historical Context, Cultural Perspective and Future Predictions, plus your own custom prompts. - Summarize & close tab: summarize, choose when you want to come back, and let the tab close itself. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌍 SUMMARIZE IN YOUR LANGUAGE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Read an English article and get the summary in German, Japanese or Spanish, or the other way round. AI Summary Helper writes summaries in 41 languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Ukrainian, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Thai, Indonesian and Vietnamese. The interface itself is available in 14 languages. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💬 ASK THE PAGE ANYTHING ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ - Follow-up questions about the article you just summarized, in a chat that remembers the conversation. - Answers come with source chips that point to the exact passage in the article. - Three suggested questions after every summary, so you can dig deeper with one click. - Pin the best answers; they are saved with the article and exported with it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🖊️ HIGHLIGHTS THAT STAY ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ - AI ghost highlights: the most important sentences are marked in light blue directly on the page. - Your own highlights in yellow, from the right-click menu; they reappear when you come back to the page. - Highlights travel with the article into Markdown, Word, Kindle and Obsidian exports. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 READ YOUR WAY ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ - Listen: have any summary or article read aloud with your browser's voices, at the speed you like. - Instant Read: hear each sentence the moment the AI writes it, hands-free. - Speed reading (RSVP): read a streaming summary word by word at slow, medium or fast speed. - Reader view with a progress ring and table of contents for long articles. - Readability scores (Flesch Reading Ease and grade level) for every saved article. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔖 SAVE FOR LATER, WITHOUT 100 OPEN TABS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Close the tab, keep the thought. Save an article with a note and a time to come back: Tomorrow, Weekend, This week or Research session. A Chrome notification brings you back to it, with your note, exactly when you asked. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🗂️ YOUR READING LIBRARY ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Every summary is stored locally in your History, organized into Inbox, Read, Sent, Research, Collections and Archive. - Search: instant full-text search across all saved articles, on your device. - Similar articles: see what else in your library is related to the article you are reading. - Duplicate detection by link, title and content keeps the library clean. - Collections: group articles under one question and work through them with a source-check worksheet. - Favorites, tags, notes and timed reminders. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🕸️ KNOWLEDGE GRAPH ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ See how everything you have read connects. The knowledge graph groups your articles into topic clusters, links articles that share tags or content, and shows a reading list of topics you have not opened in 30 days. Write a short brief for any cluster and export it as Markdown. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 READING ANALYTICS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ - Time saved: how long the full articles would have taken versus your summaries. - Articles, words read, day streak and best streak. - Activity chart for the last 30 days or 12 weeks. - Top categories and a word cloud of what you read. - Mood over time: the tone of the news you read, by da…