Skimlane

About

Skimlane is a private AI reading sidekick for Chrome that can skim pages automatically as you browse, summarize selected text on demand, and turn long or noisy sources into the exact reading output you want.

It is built for the AI content era. More of the web is long, repetitive, SEO-shaped, or AI-generated. Skimlane helps you consume it with AI that follows your taste, your goals, and your workflow, instead of giving you the same generic summary everyone else gets.

Open Skimlane in the Chrome side panel or floating panel, pick a reading recipe, and press Skim. Or turn on auto-skim and let Skimlane process pages as you move through the web. You can skip domains, skim only selected text, reopen history, bookmark useful skims, and ask follow-up questions against the current page.

Skimlane is made for power users and professional readers. You choose what kind of information should appear: TL;DR, main points, source signal, key numbers, claims, evidence, counterpoints, risks, product implications, engineering takeaways, market signal, quotes, links, tags, share angles, and custom prompts.

Why install Skimlane:
- Read long pages faster without losing the point.
- Auto-skim pages as you browse.
- Decide what is worth reading, saving, sharing, or skipping.
- Ask follow-up questions against the current page.
- Customize recipes, sections, prompts, tone, language, and reading profile.
- Save useful outputs as structured Markdown.
- Use on-device models where available or bring your own API key.
- Keep the workflow in Chrome with no Skimlane-owned backend.

Key features:
- Quick Digest: fast TL;DR, source signal, main points, and follow-up questions.
- Worth Reading?: a read, skip, or save judgment with reasons.
- Full Skimlane: a deeper structured skim for dense sources.
- Signal Cleaner: removes fluff and flags weak or repeated claims.
- Knowledge Note: turns pages into reusable notes.
- PM Brief: user impact, product implications, roadmap relevance, risks, and open questions.
- Engineering Brief: technical takeaways, implementation notes, tradeoffs, and jargon.
- Research Note: thesis, method, evidence, limitations, and unsupported claims.
- Market Brief: market signal, customer pain, competitor angle, and distribution lessons.
- Share Angles: quotes, reader themes, best replies, and ways to share the source.

Automation that stays under your control:
Skimlane can auto-skim new pages, keep a local history of skims, let you bookmark useful outputs, and let you skip domains that should not be processed automatically. You can use it as a passive reading layer while browsing or as an explicit tool when you only want to skim selected text.

Custom output for power users:
A normal AI summary treats every reader the same. Skimlane lets you customize recipes, reorder sections, add your own sections, write custom prompts, and tune the output to your role. The same source can become a product brief, engineering note, research memo, market brief, knowledge note, or personal decision aid.

Personalized reading:
Skimlane can use your reading profile to tailor outputs. Add your background, what matters to you, what to exclude, preferred output language, and tone. The result is less generic and more aligned with how you actually consume content.

Model choice:
Use Chrome Nano where available, local models through supported local runtimes, or connect providers with your own API key. Skimlane supports provider options such as Groq, OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and compatible endpoints, depending on your configuration.

Privacy and control:
Skimlane is local-first. Settings, recipes, prompts, profile, API keys, and history are stored in Chrome extension storage. There is no Skimlane-owned backend. Page content is sent only when you skim, auto-skim, generate questions, or ask follow-up questions, and only to the model provider or local model you choose. You can disable auto-skim and skip domains.

Good for:
- Product managers reading technical and market content.
- Engineers scanning architecture posts, docs, RFCs, and issue threads.
- Founders tracking market signal and competitor angles.
- Researchers and analysts separating claims, evidence, assumptions, and gaps.
- Technical writers turning sources into reusable explanations.
- PKM users saving structured Markdown into Obsidian, Notion, docs, or notes.
- Power users who want a configurable AI reading workflow, not a one-size-fits-all summarizer.

Use Skimlane as an AI summarizer, article summarizer, PDF summary tool, YouTube transcript skimmer, research assistant, and Chrome reading companion for professional reading.