Read once. Understand for good.

Name: Skimr
Availability: InStock
Author: Anu Tewari

Free Chrome extension that turns any article or PDF into AI Cliff Notes, flashcards, and a quick recall quiz — so you actually retain what you read.

Add to Chrome — Free → See how it works

Free forever No account No tracking Stores locally

What it does

Six features. One sidebar. Every page you read.

📝

Instant Cliff Notes

Auto-summarize any article or PDF into key concepts, claims, and citations. The signal, not the noise.

🃏

Auto Flashcards

Study-ready flashcards generated from the source material. Tap to reveal answers.

✅

Quiz Mode

Multiple-choice quiz to test what stuck. See exactly which concepts you missed and why.

🤖

Ask Anything

Custom Q&A grounded in the page itself — no hallucinations from the wider web.

📚

Save to Vault

Organize your study cards in one place. Export to PDF or Markdown for Obsidian, Notion, or NotebookLM.

⚡

Built for Speed

Side-panel UI stays out of your way until you need it. No tab switching, no copy-paste.

Privacy

Private. By default.

Most "AI study tools" require an account, send your reading history to their servers, and reserve the right to train on your data. Skimr does the opposite.

No Account

Install the extension and use it. No sign-up, no email, no password, no profile to create.

Stored Locally

Your Cliff Notes, flashcards, quizzes, and Vault stay on your device. Nothing syncs to any server.

No Tracking

No analytics, no ad pixels, no "anonymized" data collection in the background.

Free Forever

No subscription, no upgrade tier, no paywall. The full feature set is permanently free.

Who it's for

Built for serious readers

📚Students working through assigned reading

🎓Doctoral researchers managing dense literature

⚖️Pre-med, pre-law, exam-prep students using active recall

🌍ESL and international students re-reading dense English texts

💼Knowledge workers studying technical documentation

🧠Anyone who uses Anki, Obsidian, or NotebookLM as a study system

FAQ

Common questions

Is Skimr really free?

Yes. The full feature set is free forever. No tier, no upsell, no "Pro" version locked behind a paywall.

Do I need to sign up?

No. There's no account, no email field, no password, no login screen. You install the extension and use it.

Where is my data stored?

Locally on your device. Your Vault, flashcards, summaries, and quizzes never leave your browser.

Does it work on PDFs?

Yes. Open any PDF in Chrome and Skimr can summarize, flashcard, and quiz it the same way it does for web articles.

Can I export what I save?

Yes. Vault entries can be exported as PDF or Markdown — works directly with Obsidian, Notion, NotebookLM, and any other knowledge-base tool.

Who built this?

Anu Tewari. Originally a side project to fix my own habit of forgetting articles a week after reading them. Skimr makes active recall, the most evidence-backed study technique in cognitive science, actually frictionless to use.