Reading Time Calculator

Chrome ext. to estimate the time it will take to read the content of the web page you are visiting. 5th mini-app vibe-coded in-house.

Five months, five mini-apps.

A humble self-challenge at keeping up with AI, experimenting, exploring and sharing the interesting things I discover along the way.

This new Reading Time Calculator is a very, very simple app. Nothing revolutionary or innovative, but rather the result of lots failing and disappointment. It is more of a testimonial to my determination and perseverance even when in difficulty, than something I can proudly showcase as the result of my exploration.

The good thing is the fact that I insisted in trying to give life to what I had not been able to build last month. After wasting many hours trying to vibe code an AI interview recorder, I just didn’t want give that project up.

I was still motivated by my personal need: Wanting to record audio conversations and actual interviews between me and ChatGPT.

But despite my perseverance, I came out badly defeated also this time.

So, nonetheless I have seen that it is definitely possible to create such an AI audio recorder app, the vibe coding approach and my extremely limited programming knowledge made it impossible to build such an app as I imagined it without constantly breaking some of its critical components.

And so, the sad truth is that - whether I liked it or not - for the second month in a row, I have had to fallback on something alternative, simpler and easier to build.

Still, I have learned a few valuable things.

Exploring, experimenting and trying new things out of your comfort zone, is always good.

When I commit myself to something, I like to follow-up and stick to my promise. Even if it means coming back with a tricycle instead of a motorbike.

What I Have Learned (and you can take home)

1) Complexity
Even the smallest, most focused app, the one you think does only one thing, is much more complex than what it looks like in your fantasy.

Takeaway: the more you can draft, prototype, sketch, preview its functioning and use, the easier it will be to vibe code with AI. Unless you are open to take AI interpretation of it.

2) References
When there are basically no apps that do what you are trying to create, even AI could find it more difficult to pull off something that works. This is just my speculation. The logic being that if there are little or no examples of similar apps at work, even AI could have - for the time being - some extra difficulty in understanding how to best patch together all the various components and in which order to do so.

Takeaway: find existing tools and apps that, even partially, interpret in the way you want the functionalities and interface elements you have in mind. Give to AI screenshots, links, documentation, references to those tools so that AI too can see some concrete reference of what you want to create.

3) Simplicity
In my experience so far, Bolt has sown to be extremely good at creating minimum viable applications (MVPs) that are of limited complexity. As soon as I have added more features and functionalities I have either reached a limit where things break down continuously, or worse, the whole app has melted down.

Takeaway: Start simple with the key foundations in place. Go for frills and extra options only if needed and only if you are sure you can go back to the basic version, in case everything melts down.

4) Subscription Cost
It doesn’t matter if you still have 30M+ credits / tokens in your Bolt account. To use them you need to pay a monthly subscription anyhow. I hadn’t fully realized this, had bought lots of extra tokens - thinking I could have access to them until I had used them all - but no, when the month came to an end, I was billed again. Bolt as well as other apps, don’t make it possible to buy credits for what you use without forcing you to pay also for a sub. Wish: Charge me a one-time license fee, but then let me spend and use your tool for as much as I really need.

Takeaway: Be careful when exploring vibe coding on Bolt and similar platforms using this same business model. Consider cancelling your Bolt paid sub right after subscribing - even if you have tons of extra credits available - or it will keep on charging you periodically even if you are far from having used all of the credits you haven’t used yet. If you want to use it for another month, then re-activate the sub and nobody gets hurt.

*For the next mini-app I am tempted to try out a different vibe coding platform. Base44, Lovable or some other AI. There are so many out there, that you need to spend a little time looking into reviews and videos to understand which one could be better to try out next.

On the other hand Bolt has just released a milestone feature which could change altogether the fate of these vibe coding experiments: Automatic version history and the ability to go back to any preceding point.

N.B.: Unlike the other four previously released mini-apps (WebPage TimeDetector, CCPD Video Finder, Personal Tab, Cape Canaveral), Reading Time Calculator is accessible by everyone.

What You Can Do With It

Well, the best thing you can do with this new mini-app, is to use for what it is meant: calculating the time it will take to read a certain article.

This can be useful for at two types of users:

a) Reader
You have just opened a new web link and you see a long article, but have no idea of how much time will be needed to read it until the end. You want to know the reading time in order to decide whether to read the article immediately or to save it for later.

b) Curator
You write and publish your own content, and you curate link to articles and essays from others. You want to provide next to the link / title / author of your picks an indication of the reading time required (like it is often done when sharing links to videos or podcasts).

In both cases, the Reading Time Calculator can come in handy.

In one click you can have an instant estimate of the reading time for any web content page you are on.

How To Use Reading Time Calculator

Here’s a short video tutorial showing you how RTC works and how to use it.

Download and Install

Here the basic steps to download and install Reading Time Calculator on your Chrome browser (Mac and PC).

1. Create a folder on your computer. Name it Reading Time Calculator.

2. Click on this link to download the Chrome extension.

3. In the Dropbox page that opens click on the top right side on Download.

4. Save the .zip file inside the Reading Time Calculator folder.

5. Double-click the .zip file to uncompress it.

6. On your Chrome browser address bar type chrome://extensions and press Enter.

7. Make sure that on the top right of your screen you’re set on Developer Mode

8. On the top left of your screen click on Load Unpacked

9. In the dialog window that has just opened find the Reading Time Calculator folder. Click on it once and then click the Select blue button on the bottom right.

10. Now the Reading Time Calculator Chrome extension will appear in your list of installed Chrome extensions.

11. To make the Reading Time Calculator extension visible and clickable at all times, click on the Extensions icon displayed on the right side of the address bar, locate Reading Time Calculator and then click the pin icon next to it.

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Here is a 2-min video tutorial that shows you how to do it.

I hope you will find Reading Time Calculator useful.

The app is safe and tested against all Chrome strict security policies and rules.

from Koh Samui (Thailand)

Robin Good