I'm 35 and somewhere along the way I lost the ability to finish reading articles. I'd open them, read 2-3 paragraphs, get distracted, and close the tab feeling like a failure. My "Read Later" list became a graveyard of 2,000+ unread articles.
I tried everything – focus apps, reader modes, blocking extensions. Nothing worked. Then I realized. 'maybe the problem isn't me'. Modern web articles are designed for engagement metrics, not comprehension. Sidebars, popups, related articles, comment sections – everything is optimized to pull your attention away.
So I built Parsely. It shows one paragraph at a time, blurs everything else. Stupidly simple. But it worked. I'm finally finishing articles again.
Tech stack: WXT framework, TypeScript, Mozilla Readability (same as Firefox Reader View), Shadow DOM for style isolation.
Code is MIT licensed: https://github.com/TeamOliveCode/parsely
Happy to answer questions about the implementation or commiserate about our collective attention spans!