Track When ANY Video is Uploaded to Youtube W/ This Chrome Extension

Key takeaways

• Mock the design first in ChatGPT, then hand it to Claude to implement. The extra detail in the prompt makes a real difference in the output quality.
• CORS will block you from YouTube's InnerTube API in a background service worker. The workaround is a plain GET to youtube.com/results and parsing ytInitialData from the HTML response.
• Chrome extension alarms + background fetch work even when the YouTube tab is closed. Once the user visits YouTube once, searches can run indefinitely without any tab open.