How I Built A Chrome Extension In 24 Hours Without Writing A Single Line Of Code

How I Built a Chrome Extension in 24 Hours Without Writing a Single Line of Code

Every membership owner knows this problem. Someone posts in your Facebook group asking how to log in. Again. You go find the link, post it, tell them to bookmark it, and three weeks later it happens again.

In this episode of Run Your Private Practice with AI, I walk you through how I used Claude CoWork to build and publish a custom Chrome extension for my members, without touching a single line of code and without hiring anyone on Fiverr. We’re talking a real, downloadable Chrome extension, live in the Chrome Web Store, built for less than $5. If you’ve got a membership, a course, or honestly just a recurring task that makes you want to scream, this one’s going to get your brain spinning.

AI Tips You Don’t Want to Miss:

How to describe a problem to Claude CoWork and let it do the technical work, even when you have no coding background.
Why reducing login friction directly impacts membership retention (and what you can do about it today).
The step-by-step process Claude used to build, design, and submit the Chrome extension to the Google Web Store.
How to think about your own business bottlenecks as potential Chrome extension ideas for clients or internal use.
Why the $100/month Claude plan handled everything a $1,000 Fiverr developer would have.

Mentioned in this episode:
Freebie 100 AI side hustles for therapists: https://kymtolson.kartra.com/page/opt-in-100-side-hustles

Chrome extension for members: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/aammopfhfdnfmfhldfhdflbaggolnmkd

TheraAI Hub + Clinical AI Club
Unified sales page (Hub, Club, and bundle on one page): https://kymtolson.kartra.com/page/AI-Tools-for-Therapists

Bill Like A Boss
Or Kartra: https://kymtolson.kartra.com/page/blab

Run Your Private Practice with AI (free Facebook group)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/aiprivatepractice/

Email mentioned in the episode: info@kymtolson.com

Connect with me:

Instagram: @thetravelingtherapist_kym
Join the Clinical AI Club: www.clinicalaiclub.com

Sponsored by Alma: www.helloalma.com/kym
Sponsored by Berries:www.heyberries.com/therapists
Sponsored by Auralink Pro: Start your free trial and use code KYMTOLSON for 20% off www.auralink.com/pro

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Run Your Private Practice with AI. Another interesting week in AI. Me just figuring out ways to use AI to solve problems really in my business. Okay, so here’s a problem that comes up a lot. If you are in a membership, right? Have you ever found yourself like, “I really wanna log in to that membership portal, but I can’t find the link.

[00:00:21] It’s somewhere in my emails. I’m gonna have to search for it. I don’t remember what to search”? And it’s just like this whole thing. I do this all the time. I’m a member of, like, lots of memberships, probably too many, ’cause I can’t get to all the content. But what happened last week was in the… I have a private Facebook group for my membership for the TheraAI Hub and the Clinical AI Club.

[00:00:41] It’s like a joint private Facebook group where we can kind of geek out on AI and stuff. Somebody posted in there, and I hear this too in the meetings, like we have two live mastermind meetings, and almost every time somebody says, “How do I log in again?” So anyway, somebody posted in the Facebook group, and she was like, “My biggest problem is I can’t ever remember how to log in.”

[00:01:02] And one was like, “I can get into the club, but I can’t get into the hub.” So I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is a problem for me, too.” So what does my brain do? I’m like, “I need to figure out a better solution to this,” because normally what I would do is I would just go find the link, which takes me, like, five minutes myself to even find my own link.

[00:01:19] I’d come back to the group. I’d drop it. I’d say, “Here you go. Save it, bookmark it,” that sort of thing. But inevitably, every single month this is happening, so I’m like, “I need a better solution.” So I’m like, “Gosh, you know what? Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way for me to build a Chrome extension that you can download from the Chrome extension store and have my membership portals pinned to the top of the Chrome browser?”

[00:01:42] So anybody that’s a member, instead of having to go dig and look for the membership, they could just go up there, click on the Chrome extension, download it, and be able to just get to my memberships easily. So there were a couple things I thought about that. I’m like, “Okay, I have lots of memberships and products,” right?

[00:01:59] So I’m like, “How could I make it maybe so it’s, like, not just for the AI members but for…” You know, I have another membership called Bill Like A Boss. Same problem over there. People are always saying, like, “I can’t even remember how to log into this hub.” And I want them in the hubs, right? If you’re ever thinking about a membership or a course or something like that, you want, like, as least friction as possible, especially something like a membership where it’s, like, recurring.

[00:02:22] Every month you’re paying for something. If you’re like, “Oh my gosh, here comes another bill, and I don’t even know how to log in,” like Netflix. If you didn’t know how to log into Netflix and you got that bill every month, eventually you’d be like, “You know what? I’m just gonna cancel this, ’cause it’s too annoying.”

[00:02:35] So part of owning a membership, which is another income stream, is like reducing fr- friction, reducing overwhelm, reducing like the, the issue with even being able to digest the content, like making it as easy as possible. So anyway, I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna build a Chrome extension.” And then of course I’m like, “I don’t know how to build a Chrome extension.”

[00:02:57] So I kind of look for a second on Fiverr. You know on Fiverr you can go out and find people to do like these one-off tasks, and it’s like $1,000 to build a Chrome extension. I’m like, “I’m not paying for that, no.” I mean, it can’t be that complicated to figure out. So what did I do? I went to my buddy Claude, Claude CoWork, and I was like Basically, I didn’t even prompt it really.

[00:03:18] You, you don’t even have to really be a good prompter these days in my opinion. You could just literally go to your AI that already knows a lot about you and just say, “I’ve got this problem, help me solve it.” So went over and typed it into Claude Cowork, and immediately it’s like spinning up these sub-agents.

[00:03:33] If you’ve used Claude Cowork at all, it’s got all these sub-agents in there that are already like trained on different skills. So first thing it says is, “Connect me to your browser,” which I was like, “Sure.” So I connect it to my Chrome browser, and it just goes out and connects remotely. So now it has access to my browser, and it can do the work for me.

[00:03:52] So really it wasn’t even me building. I’m saying I built a Chrome browser extension, but really I built it with Claude, and really Claude did most of the work. So I’m just gonna tell you a little bit about it in case you’re listening to this and you’re like I’ve got a membership too, or I’ve got a course, and like literally every day I get an email about somebody not being able to find the content or they don’t know how to log in.

[00:04:12] This is a huge customer service issue. I have a VA and, you know, if I’m not like trying to find the links for people, she is. Like I’m forwarding it to her. So it’s taking somebody’s time and energy to go get these links and respond to these emails. Or just like in my private Facebook group, having to go find the links myself and post them.

[00:04:29] All that being said, this might make you think of other things, even in your own business. Like, are there certain things that I have friction with that I could even build my own Chrome extension and just have on my browser to make my life easier? And of course, now I’m gonna like brainstorm a thousand ideas for different Chrome extensions.

[00:04:46] You might see a little Chrome extension store from me in the near future, ’cause it was so easy to do with Claude Cowork. Okay, so step one, I told Claude what I wanted it to build. Step two, it actually created the code. So it was like, “Oh, I could totally envision this.” So it was, “Give me your links to your membership portal.”

[00:05:04] So I gave it the links, and it was like, “I know your branding colors already. Do you think we should go with this color?” And I was like, “Yeah, that sounds good.” And then it was like brainstorming back and forth with me. It was like, “Should we have it like a dropdown menu where they can just log in for each membership?”

[00:05:18] And I was like, “Perfect. That’s exactly what we should do.” It went out to the browser after I connected it, and I did have to intervene a little bit, which I think is a good thing at this point. You have to pay attention. You have to like approve, authorize. So it literally went to the Go- Google Chrome extension store, and it’s doing all this.

[00:05:38] I’m just literally watching this happen. It goes to find the developer portal through the Google account. It pulls up the application essentially, so you have to fill in some information. It was asking me like, you know, “What’s the answer to this, this, or this?” And at one point it’s like, “It would be a lot easier if you could just come over here and click on these dropdown menus and fill in the answers.”

[00:05:57] And I was like, “Okay. Fair. I could do that.” That, that’s a little lazy on my part ’cause it didn’t know the answers. It was like questions about my business and what type of business I am and all of that. So I went and filled that part in. So we’re doing this together in conjunction. So then when, you know, the whole thing was filled out, it was asking like for screenshots about what the plugin looks like.

[00:06:16] Like the… Before I could submit the plugin, the zip package that Claude Cowork built for me, it was asking for screenshots. So it wanted to know what it was gonna look like and all that. So I- you know, went back to Claude. I was like, “Well, it’s asking for screenshots now.” Two seconds later, it’s got these little icons.

[00:06:33] So if you download… I’ll put the link down if you wanna download the extension to try it out, especially if you’re a member, please download it. It’s gonna make your life a lot easier. It just made a little icon. It says KT for Kim Tolson. It’s a little green icon, one of my brand colors, and it literally just sits up on the Chrome.

[00:06:48] Now, so I pinned it to the top of my Chrome browser, and I can just go click on it any time. Even for me, it’s gonna be easier ’cause I can just get those links and share them with people if they haven’t installed the Chrome browser. So anyway, it asked for the screenshots, and it’s like, “Here you go, Kim.”

[00:07:00] And it’s like boom, boom, boom, boom. And it was like, “Do you want me to download these to a folder on your computer and then upload them, or do you wanna do it?” And I was like, “I can do it.” So I did that part but it could have done it for me, which is pretty amazing. And then it needed me to confirm a couple things.

[00:07:15] So the Google Store wanted my identity, so I had to take a picture and upload the front and back of my ID. And then I had to pay a $5 lifetime developer fee for the Google Chrome extension store, so it needed my credit card information. Claude will not do that at this point. It’s not gonna take your credit card information and upload it for you.

[00:07:33] So I did that part, and then basically it was, like, submitted, and Claude is, like, my biggest cheerleader, right? And it’s like, “Oh my gosh, you submitted your first Chrome extension. This is so exciting.” And, you know, Google said it would take, like, 20 to 30 days, it could, to get approval, but literally within, like, six hours I had the approval email back to me, and I went and tested it, downloaded it myself, put it on my own browser, clicked it, made sure all the buttons worked.

[00:07:56] It looks really cute. I took a screenshot, and then I took it back to Claude and said, “Oh my gosh, it works,” and Claude celebrated with me. And then I was like, “Okay, now I need to promote this thing,” right? So I need an email to the members of the Thera AI Hub to let them know this new resource is available.

[00:08:12] I need HTML code basically that I can put in my membership portal to make it look pretty and have a nice button that they can click and add to their Chrome browser. I want a cold email essentially that I can send to the people in my free Facebook group, the Run Your Private Practice with AI free Facebook gr- group, to tell them what I did to inspire them and to also say, like, “Look, isn’t this cool?”

[00:08:37] And then I want one for the private Facebook group members too to explain how to install it and all that stuff. So it knocked that out in about two seconds. And then I was like, “By the way, wouldn’t it be cool if I just did a podcast episode about this to encourage others to think about Chrome extension ideas that they could also do in their own business?”

[00:08:55] So of course, it wrote the script or the outline essentially for this podcast that I’m talking to you about right now. Claude generated the outline that kinda told me, like, “Make sure you talk about this, this, and this,” ’cause this was all part of the process of building the extension. So the key takeaways I guess I want you guys to hear about this is you don’t need to know how to code.

[00:09:15] You don’t need to hire experts on Fiverr to do a lot of this stuff for you. I have the $100 max plan on Claude, and it literally did all of that for me, and it would’ve done even more if I’d gotten stuck. The second takeaway, AI is best at these small, annoying little things that you’re doing every single day, so that was one of them.

[00:09:37] I hate… I mean, I just hate when people ask for the link because then I’ve gotta go find it and post it, and the time it would take to tell my VA to go respond to this post and find it, it’s, like, the same amount of time. So I just find myself with these little things like this that are just obnoxious to me that I have to continue to do over and over again.

[00:09:55] Not the members. It’s my fault that they can’t find it very easily, but it’s annoying to me to have to go find a link and post it constantly. So the little things like that. If you’re like, “Every day, like, I’m doing this thing that annoys the crap out of me,” probably go to Claude CoWork and type in, “This thing’s annoying the crap out of me.

[00:10:12] Help me automate it,” and it can help you automate it. It can find a solution for you and then walk you through how to actually automate the solution, which is just amazing to me. The third thing is that I’ll do it someday. Someday is now. If you have the idea, just go pop it in there and get a breakdown of how much time it’s gonna take, and then put a little block on your calendar, knock it out, and it’s gonna save you so much time, like exponentially over the next weeks, months, that sort of thing.

[00:10:40] If all of my members installed this Chrome browser, nobody’s gonna ask me for the link anymore, right? I’ve got it pinned to the top of my Facebook group now, so I can just kinda like tag people in that post and say, “Install the Chrome browser,” or “Here’s the link if you don’t wanna do it that way.” So those are the three takeaways I want you to hear from this episode, and also, what are your ideas for a Chrome extension browser plugin that you can put for your clients?

[00:11:05] Imagine that, like your, your voice, your skill set that you could just give to your clients in a newsletter to say, “Hey, are you, you know, are you forgetting the things that I always talk about? Here’s my top 10 recommended ways to cope with,” whatever your niche is. Tell them to pin it to the top of their Chrome browser.

[00:11:22] When they’re thinking or they need support or help, click the button, a little dropdown menu’s gonna come down and remind them of what they need to be doing or the work that you’re doing together. It’s pretty amazing. And now that I’m a developer, I could put like 1,000 of these things in there. It’s a $5 fee, and you know how my brain works, I probably…

[00:11:38] Yeah, by the end of next week I’ll probably have like three more in there ’cause I just like get obsessed with this stuff, trying to like make more, more accessible things for therapists and also to make my life easier. So I might do some personal Chrome extensions that I find I’m still doing, like annoying little things every day.

[00:11:54] I just got an idea as I was talking. I created like this content calendar for like my AI audience, and I just was like, “Wow, couldn’t I just send the feed to a plugin where I just click it and it just gives me the day’s idea?” Like that, that seems really easy for me to do, so I think I might do that. You might hear me talking more about that too.

[00:12:14] Okay. So if you’re in the TheraAI Hub or the Clinical AI Club, you guys just got this Chrome extension in your email earlier today with the instructions on how to install it. So please make sure you check your email for an email from me and install it to make your life a little bit easier. And if you’re not a member yet, and you want to learn how to use AI easier, more efficiently, to make your life better, to run your private practice more effortlessly, come join us.

[00:12:42] Come join us in the TheraAI Hub and the Clinical AI Club. I’ll put the link down below. I also have a new freebie I put out. It’s called s- 100 Scalable Offers for Therapists this month. We’re putting that in the memberships. A roadmap for how to use the tools in the TheraAI Hub to start with an idea.

[00:13:00] With this freebie, I’m gonna give you 100 scalable offers, and then use each of the tools in the TheraAI Hub as it’s listed in the roadmap, and you’ll have a product by the end of the weekend if you want to go in there and do that with an idea that’s been sitting there or use that free guide to give you an idea We have to scale out of this one-to-one.

[00:13:20] I just think it’s essential with the way things are going right now. We were talking in the Clinical AI Club meeting this week, the mastermind, and everybody was saying that their caseloads are down, that they can’t fill their caseloads. This is the next step, the next evolution of being a therapist in the world of AI, in my opinion.

[00:13:38] You’re gonna have to have another offer that you can sell in conjunction with your therapy. So I hope that inspires you. Let me know what you think. As always, if you build something based on what you hear in this episode, send me an email at info@kimtolson.com. I wanna hear about it, and I want to even feature what you’re building.

[00:13:55] I’d love to just talk more about that, what you’re building, and be able to share it with the audience in the TheraAI Hub, the Clinical AI Club, to let them know what you’re building. Have a great weekend. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.