I'm 17 and built an Integrated AI Writing Assistant and Environment
Hey HN! We’re a group of high school students who built Factful, a Chrome extension that helps with research, fact-checking, and writing—all inline. When we first launched Factful as a web app, we got a lot of feedback asking for a more integrated experience, so we built a Chrome extension to let you fact-check and look up information without switching tabs. Making this work inside Google Docs was way harder than expected. Since Docs renders text using a canvas instead of regular HTML, we had to come up with creative workarounds to analyze and interact with what’s being written. It took a…
In plain words
Factful is a Chrome extension that integrates AI-powered research, fact-checking, and writing assistance directly into Google Docs and other web applications without requiring tab switching. Built by high school students, it analyzes text as users write and provides inline fact-checking and information lookup capabilities. The tool works within Google Docs' canvas-based text rendering through custom technical solutions and offers citation formatting features.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN! We’re a group of high school students who built Factful, a Chrome extension that helps with research, fact-checking, and writing—all inline. When we first launched Factful as a web app, we got a lot of feedback asking for a more integrated experience, so we built a Chrome extension to let you fact-check and look up information without switching tabs. Making this work inside Google Docs was way harder than expected. Since Docs renders text using a canvas instead of regular HTML, we had to come up with creative workarounds to analyze and interact with what’s being written. It took a ton of experimentation, but we finally got it working smoothly. We first posted on HN a while back and got amazing feedback, which helped us refine the fact-checking accuracy, improve the UI, and add better citation formatting. We're still in beta, and we'd love to hear what else we can improve. Let us know what you think—what’s missing? What would make this a tool you’d actually use?
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