Privacy

Counter Chrome Extension

Last updated: 2026-05-10. This page covers the Counter chrome extension specifically. The web app at debateai.com is governed by the platform's general terms.

Single purpose

Counter is a chrome extension for practicing the oral defense of your own academic work — an essay you wrote, a project you built, a paper you drafted, a chapter you studied. You highlight a passage (or paste it in), and an examiner-style AI cross-examines you out loud. The AI plays the panel; you defend the argument. Voice round, oral feedback, no debate format required.

What the extension does with your data

Selection text

When you click a Counter context-menu item, press a Counter keyboard shortcut, or click the floating "Quiz me" pill in Google Docs, the text you have selected is read by the extension and posted into the Counter side panel. From the side panel it is sent to debateai.com, which forwards it to large language model providers (Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini, xAI Grok) and text-to-speech providers (OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Inworld, Cartesia) for processing. No selection text is stored long-term by the extension itself.

Voice audio

If you start a voice round, your microphone audio is captured by the browser and streamed directly to OpenAI's Realtime API over WebRTC using a short-lived ephemeral token. The Counter extension and DebateAI's servers are not in the audio path. OpenAI processes the audio according to its privacy policy.

Activity within the extension

The extension uses chrome.storage.session to queue a single pending action between the moment you click a context-menu item and the moment the side panel finishes loading. This data lives only as long as the browser window stays open and is cleared the moment it is consumed.

Authentication, billing, usage history

If you sign in via the side panel, sign-in happens against debateai.com using Google OAuth (Firebase Authentication). The extension does not store, read, or transmit Google credentials directly. Billing is handled at debateai.com via Stripe; the extension never sees payment information. Usage history (rounds you ran, motions you saved) is stored against your DebateAI account on Firestore, not in the extension.

Google Docs (optional, opt-in only)

Counter can connect to your Google account so it can read the Google Doc you currently have open, use it as the source for an oral exam drill, and (with your explicit confirmation) apply targeted text edits the AI proposes. This is strictly opt-in and every write is gated on your manual Apply to Doc click. The flow is:

You click Connect in the side panel's Docs strip.
Google's OAuth consent screen opens. You choose your account and approve the requested scopes (documents for read + write, userinfo.email to display the connected account in the side panel).
Chrome stores a short-lived access token in its own chrome.identity cache, which the extension reads but never copies, never persists, and never transmits anywhere except to Google's official APIs.
When you click Read active doc, the extension reads the URL of your active tab, extracts the document ID, calls https://docs.googleapis.com/v1/documents/{docId} with your token, and shows the document title + first 600 characters in the side panel.
If you ask the agent to sharpen a specific passage, the doc text and your request are sent to https://debateai.com/api/docs-agent, which proxies the call to Anthropic Claude with one tool (propose_edit) and returns the proposed replacement. The agent never writes to your doc on its own.
The proposal renders inline in the side panel as a diff. If you click Apply to Doc, the extension calls documents.batchUpdate with a single replaceAllText request that swaps the exact agent-proposed text with the new text. If you click Reject, nothing is written.
All edits are reversible from inside Google Docs via Cmd/Ctrl+Z and the version history (File → Version history). The extension never deletes content beyond the specific span the agent proposed and you confirmed.
Clicking Disconnect revokes the cached token immediately. You can also revoke access at any time from your Google account's connected apps page.

The extension does NOT iterate over other tabs, does NOT read documents in the background, does NOT auto-apply edits, and does NOT transmit doc content to anyone except (a) the Google Docs API directly and (b) the /api/docs-agent endpoint for the duration of generating one edit proposal. Doc content shown in the side panel exists only for the duration of the current panel view.

What the extension never does

It does not read the contents of pages you have not selected text on.
It does not run on a page until you click the toolbar icon, use a context-menu item, or trigger a keyboard shortcut on that tab.
It does not collect personally identifiable information from web pages.
It does not sell, rent, or share your data with third parties for advertising.
It does not bundle analytics or session-replay tools.

Permissions, in plain language

sidePanel: render the Counter UI in Chrome's side panel.
contextMenus: add the "Quiz me on this passage", "Defend this out loud", and "Cross-examine the AI on this" entries when you right-click selected text.
activeTab: when you trigger Counter, read the URL and selection of the tab you are on so the extension knows what to send to the panel. No other tabs are accessed.
tabs: read the URL of your active tab when you click "Read active doc" so the extension can identify which Google Doc you are looking at. The extension does not iterate other tabs, does not listen for tab changes, and does not read tab content beyond the URL.
storage: queue a single pending action between context-menu click and side-panel load. Nothing else is stored.
clipboardRead: support the "Paste from clipboard" fallback button in the side panel, used in environments where the right-click flow is intercepted by the page.
identity: enable Google OAuth via chrome.identity.getAuthToken so you can connect your Google account and have Counter read your active Google Doc. Tokens are held only in Chrome's identity cache, never persisted by the extension.
host_permissions for debateai.com and debatethedevil.com: load the side panel's iframe content from those origins.
host_permissions for docs.googleapis.com and www.googleapis.com: call the Google Docs API (read-only) and the Google OAuth userinfo endpoint after you have explicitly connected your Google account.
Content script on all URLs: required to detect copy events in Google Docs (which uses canvas rendering, so the standard right-click + selection capture does not work). The content script does not read the page; it only listens for copy events to surface the floating "Quiz me" pill on Docs and Office Online.

Deleting your data

To delete extension-side data, remove the extension from chrome://extensions. To delete account-side data (rounds, motions, billing), sign in at debateai.com and use the account modal's "Delete account" option, or email the address below.

Children's privacy

Counter is not directed at children under 13. Users under 18 should use the extension with the supervision of a parent or guardian.

Changes to this policy

If the extension's data handling changes materially, this page is updated and the version of the extension is bumped. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent change.

Contact

Questions, deletion requests, or security reports: email the maintainer via debateai.com's contact form, or open an issue on the public repository if one is listed in the Chrome Web Store entry.