Glyph Thief Monkey

Feb 19, 2026 · live

A Chrome extension that steals one letter and ruins everything.

Not in a dramatic way. In a small, constant, mentally expensive way. Which is arguably worse.

What it does

On each page load, Glyph Thief Monkey picks a single letter and removes that letter from visible text across the page.

Result:

reading becomes slightly harder
your brain starts compensating
after a while you get weirdly annoyed at the entire internet

It is a tiny sabotage layer for the web. Useless, but with commitment.

USP

A Chrome extension that randomly selects one letter and removes it from every webpage you visit, turning normal reading into a slow-motion cognitive tax.

One-liner

Steals one letter. Ruins everything.

Tagline

The web, but slightly damaged.

Why it exists

Because most “productivity tools” promise to improve your browsing experience, and I wanted to test the opposite.

Also because there is something deeply satisfying about a tool that does exactly one stupid thing, and does it consistently.

Notes (because humans love chaos but hate consequences)

“Daily rotation” uses UTC, so it won’t flip exactly at local midnight in Copenhagen. That’s intentional: stable across devices.
If you want local midnight instead, it’s basically a small change.
Mercy mode avoids forms and editable text. Without it, you will absolutely wreck logins, checkout flows, and any site that relies on exact text.
Which is funny until you’re locked out of your bank.

Practical settings philosophy

This is one of those projects where the best feature is a safety feature.

Without constraints, browser extensions become accidental malware very quickly. “Mercy mode” is the difference between:

playful sabotage
and breaking things people actually need

So yes, the monkey steals glyphs. But even the monkey has limits.

What I like about this one

The idea is instantly understandable
The effect is visible in one second
It changes how a familiar interface feels without adding visual clutter
It is stupid in a very clean way

That matters more than it should.

What I’d test next

Per-site allow/block lists (for people who need to keep banking and taxes readable)
A stronger “chaos mode” that rotates more often
A “theme mode” where the stolen letter is chosen by source text frequency
Export/import settings, because people will absolutely get attached to their preferred level of damage

Sponsorship angle

This is a good example of a small, sponsor-friendly experiment:

fast to understand
easy to demo
memorable enough to share

It is also a good reminder that AI can help you build a tool nobody asked for, faster than ever.