Show HN: Chrome Extension to Preview Escaped Strings

1 point

9 months ago

Hi HN! I got tired of squinting at escaped strings when debugging LLM API calls, so I built a Chrome extension that instantly renders them.

When working with OpenAI/Claude/etc APIs, the request/response logs are full of escaped strings like "You asked:\n\n\"What is recursion?\"\n\nRecursion is when...". This extension lets you select any text containing these escape sequences and instantly see what it actually looks like.

How it works: Select any escaped string on a webpage → See the rendered output in a floating panel. Works great on API logs.

No more copy-pasting into console or online decoders. Everything runs locally in your browser.

GitHub: https://github.com/aeft/escaped-string-viewer

Built this to scratch my own itch - would love to know if others find it useful!