AI product readCollaborative web and PDF annotation tool that allows users to highlight, annotate, and tag web pages, PDF documents, and EPUBs
Enables collaborative reading, research organization, and discussion by allowing users to add annotations, highlights, tags, and comments directly on web content and documents
User installs extension, browses web pages or opens PDFs, selects text to highlight or annotate, writes comments/tags, and shares annotations with collaborators through Hypothesis groups. The extension injects a sidebar into web pages and provides a built-in PDF viewer. Annotations are stored on the Hypothesis service (hypothes.is) and synced across devices.
Highlight text on web pages, PDFs, and EPUBsCreate annotations with comments on any web contentTag and organize annotationsCollaborative annotation in shared groupsSupport for PDF viewing with built-in PDF.js viewerSidebar interface for browsing and managing annotations
- Target users
- Researchers / Students / Academics / Journalists / Knowledge workers / Anyone needing collaborative reading and annotation
- Source files are heavily minified (annotator.bundle.js, sidebar.bundle.js), making deeper code analysis difficult
- Could not inspect the actual Hypothesis API to determine if free tier has usage limits or feature restrictions
- The extension's profile.html and notebook.html are minimal HTML shells loading from the same bundle, limiting visibility into specific UI flows
MonetizationNo paid features detected
No evidence of paid feature gating, billing APIs, subscription logic, upgrade prompts, or premium feature checks in the extension source code. The 'premium' keyword match found in ui-playground.bundle.js line 276 is in unrelated sample text about California rolls (sushi description). No Stripe, payment, or billing integrations detected. The Hypothesis service (hypothes.is) offers organizational/enterprise plans externally, but the extension itself does not gate any features behind payment.
- Confidence
- 80
- Payment platform
- --
- Source
- AI / Medium
- Login required
- Yes
- Reason
- The extension uses OAuth to authenticate with the Hypothesis service (hypothes.is). The sidebar code has an `isLoggedIn` selector checking `profile.userid !== null` (sidebar.bundle.js line 109), and the UI shows a 'Log in' button for unauthorized users when accessing content (sidebar.bundle.js line 134). Creating annotations requires an authenticated user account on hypothes.is. The extension itself does not implement its own account system — it delegates authentication to the Hypothesis destination service via OAuth (oauthClientId configured in app.html line 10 and extension.bundle.js line 180).
Great community and very responsive. Clever implementation of an annotation tool.
All I need and for free!
This annotation tool has amazing potential. As an instructional designer, I use it in my work with faculty for password-protected LMS pages while developing courses. It's invaluable. We can give each other feedback right in the course and close the loop on action items. However, there's one major problem: annotations get lost. Rather, they don't show up where they should. I can always find it on the Hypothesis site after some effort, but this major glitch has hampered my course development process and has frustrated many of my faculty who are difficult to persuade to use new technology. I hope you will fix this glitch. Please advise.
Το χρησιμοποιώ πολύ για να κρατάω σημειώσεις και να τις μοιράζομαι με άλλους, ακόμη και αυτούς που δεν έχουν εγκαταστήσει το chrome extension.
Thank you for putting an end to endless useless alternatives!
This is a great tool for highlighting and annotating text on the web. I use it for my doctoral studies and it's fast, light-weight, and easy to use.
The way to think in the knowledge era!
akademisyenler kullanmalı
Extremely useful and innovating tool to annotate any web page ... I would suggest adding more options such as stronger yellow colors which can be more easily seen, and a more complete pallet of colores (red,purple, greent etc.)
A great tool for studying, sharing, and classifying text on the internet. The ability to categorize annotations is especially helpful. I second Anita's request for public read groups!! The ability to programmatically control which annotations are displayed by the extension would be very useful - for instance, to display only annotations in a given category. And the ability to switch the display on and off and between categories would go a long way to support development of automated learning solutions. I'm excited to watch the evolution of this great tool.