Made my first Chrome extension: Gmail Feed (from a non-technical background)

Hey HN,

I come from a non-technical background but recently started experimenting with a lot of “vibe coding” to try building something useful.

Originally I wanted to build a full email app using Gmail APIs. But the deeper I went, the more complicated it became. The security requirements, backend work, and API limitations made it hard to keep things simple.

So I stepped back and tried a different approach.

Instead of building a new email app, I built a Chrome extension that changes how Gmail is viewed.

After many attempts (and a lot of trial and error), I ended up making Gmail Feed.

The extension lets you:

See your emails in a feed-style view

Open a preview of the email quickly

Click “View Thread” to jump to the original email inside Gmail

It runs entirely on the client side:

No backend

No external APIs

No data collection

So it’s basically free forever and privacy friendly.

This is my first extension and I’m still learning a lot, so I’d really appreciate feedback from the HN community.

Curious about:

whether the idea is useful

UX improvements

things I should improve technically

Thanks!