Any page, at the length you want.

StretchText turns a web page into stretchtext: the article arrives short, and a click grows one phrase right where it stands. Click it again and it shrinks back. No separate reader, no summary panel, no hopping to another tab.

Download the extension Source on GitHub

Try the shape of it

In 1967 Ted Nelson described stretchtext: text that grows where the reader wants more and shrinks back where they don't. Writing every level by hand was too much work, so it never caught on. Generated text makes it cheap, and the idea is back.

The web is the obvious place for it. Every article arrives at one fixed length: too long if you already know the topic, too short if you don't. A reader who could open a single paragraph and close the rest would read a sixth of the words, according to the author of cc-stretch, a Claude Code plugin that does exactly this to Claude's replies.

StretchText is a browser extension for that. Open any article, press Alt+S, and the page is rewritten as a short version where every sentence still says what it said. Dotted phrases grow the detail back in place; click them again and the page is short again. Restore puts the original page back, links and all, because the original nodes are kept, not re-rendered.

Dotted phrases come from the real engine, with spans fixed by hand.

How it works

  1. On activation the extension collects the readable paragraphs of the page — the ones a person would actually read — and sends their text to a Pollinations text model in one request.
  2. The model returns each paragraph as spans: the quote that stays, and the phrases that can grow, each with the detail it hides. Nothing is invented; the detail is the original wording.
  3. The engine swaps each paragraph for its short version, keeping the original nodes in memory. Clicking a dotted phrase inserts its detail after itself; clicking again removes it; Alt+S restores the page untouched.

Install

  1. Download the zip above and unzip it, or clone the repository.
  2. Open chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode, choose Load unpacked, and pick the unzipped folder.
  3. Click the StretchText icon and choose Connect Pollen. Enter the code at enter.pollinations.ai/device — the key it issues spends only your own Pollen, with the budget and expiry you approve.
  4. Open any article and press Alt+S.

What it costs

One page is one text request: a few thousandths of a Pollen with the default model, and free models cost nothing. Results are cached per browser session, so stretching and restoring the same page twice is free. Models marked paid on the list need a funded balance; the default is not one of them.