For web pages & articles
AI to read any web page — with the receipts.
Sidenote is a Chrome extension that summarises and answers questions about whatever article you're reading. Ask a question, click a citation, and Sidenote scrolls the page to the exact passage that proves the answer. No copy-paste, no upload, nothing left to take on trust.
The problem
The article has the answer. Reading all of it is the cost.
Long reads, dense documentation and ten-tab research sessions all share the same tax: the thing you actually need is buried somewhere in the middle, and a chatbot summary you can't verify just moves the problem — now you don't know which bits were invented.
Sidenote summarises the page you're on and answers your questions in the browser — and every claim comes with a citation that scrolls you to the exact sentence, so you can check it in one click.
How it works
How Sidenote works on a web page.
Want the one-line version of this? Sidenote summarises any page in a click — and citations scroll you to the exact source.
Use cases
What readers ask a page — and how Sidenote answers.
- “What's the TL;DR of this long read?”A 4,000-word feature becomes a short, cited summary — every line links back to the paragraph on the page it came from.
- “Does this article actually back that claim?”Ask about a specific assertion and Sidenote quotes the sentence that supports it — or tells you the page never says it.
- “Explain this paragraph like I'm new to it.”Highlight a dense passage and ask for plain English. The explanation stays grounded in what the page actually says.
- “What are the three key takeaways here?”Sidenote pulls the main points from a sprawling post and cites each one back to its source line.
- “Where on this page does it mention pricing?”Ask, click the citation, and Sidenote scrolls you straight to the passage — no Ctrl-F guessing at the right keyword.
- “Compare what these two articles say.”Bundle the pages you've opened into a Collection and ask across all of them — citations name which article each point came from.
Grounded by design
It reads the page in front of you. Nothing else.
Sidenote reads what your browser already sees in the current tab — it doesn't crawl the wider web in the background and it doesn't bypass anything your browser can't access. A page is only ever read once you open it with the side panel active, and answers are checked against the passages on that page before they reach you.
Unsupported claims are dropped before you see them. If a sentence in an answer isn't backed by a passage on the page, Sidenote removes it server-side. Page content lives behind row-level security in our UK (eu-west-2) region; Anthropic and Voyage AI both run with no-training defaults on the API tiers we use, and we never fine-tune models on user content.
Comparedvs pasting into ChatGPTCopy-paste loses the page's structure and the source, and you can end up debugging which bits the model invented. Sidenote ingests the page in place, checks every answer against the retrieved passages, and links each claim back to where it came from. vs a generic summariserA plain summary tells you what an article roughly says. Sidenote tells you exactly where it says it — every line of the summary is a citation that scrolls the page to the source. Reading several pages at once? Bundle them into a Collection and ask across all of them at once.
Sidenote vs the usual way of reading.
Most AI reading tools either lose the source or never had it. Sidenote keeps the page, keeps the structure, and keeps a click-through to the line every answer rests on.
FAQ
Common questions about Sidenote for web pages.
Can Sidenote summarise any web page?
Yes. Sidenote reads the article or page open in your current tab — news features, blog posts, documentation, marketing pages, forum threads — and turns it into a short, cited summary. There's nothing to upload and nothing to paste: it reads the page where it already lives.
What does “with citations” actually mean for a web page?
Every claim in a summary or answer carries a citation chip. Click it and Sidenote scrolls the page to the exact passage and highlights it, so you can verify the answer against the original sentence in one click rather than skimming for it.
Do I have to copy and paste the article into a chat box?
No. Copy-paste loses the page's structure and strips the source. Sidenote ingests the page in place, checks every answer against the passages it retrieved, and links each claim back to where it came from on the page.
Does it work on pages behind a login or paywall?
Sidenote reads what your browser can already see in the tab. If you're logged in and the content is rendered on screen, Sidenote can read and answer questions about it — it doesn't bypass paywalls or access anything your browser can't.
How does Sidenote avoid making things up about an article?
Answers are grounded in passages retrieved from the page, and any claim that isn't supported by the page is dropped server-side before you see it. If the article doesn't say something, Sidenote won't pretend it does — it'll tell you the page doesn't cover it.
Is the page content I read kept private?
Yes. Pages are read only when you open them with the side panel active, stored behind row-level security in our UK (eu-west-2) region, and never used to train models — Anthropic and Voyage AI both run with no-training defaults on the API tiers we use.
Try it on your next tab
Read anything in your browser. With citations.
Add Sidenote to Chrome, open the article you're putting off, and ask for the TL;DR — then click a citation to check it on the page. Free tier forever, 7-day Pro trial — no card required.
No upload · Reads the page you already have open