stringme.dev updates

Update (4/21/25): stringme.dev now redirects to llmstxt.new (more here).

Spent today iterating on stringme.dev. Some updates:

I added quick URL buttons so you can instantly try the service with example websites.

The copy across the site got a significant upgrade too. Clearer, more concise, and hopefully a bit more engaging.

I implemented Mozilla's readabilityjs to strip away all that extraneous filler text from webpages. You know, the stuff that makes your eyes glaze over when you're just trying to get to the content.

I've also improved the text optimization while stubbornly refusing to use an LLM for this process itself. It's become something of a personal challenge, though I will probably cave at some point. (Google's new Gemma 3 model seems promising.)

Navigation improved, with keyboard shortcuts and better handling of back navigation from the generated plain text. Quality-of-life improvements like this add up.

Behind the scenes, I consolidated the local and API text formatting/optimization functions, which should make future improvements more manageable. Plus, I made some subtle layout tweaks that you probably won't notice but would definitely miss if they weren't there.

Tomorrow I'll post a more comprehensive breakdown of how this project came together from the beginning, along with some lessons learned along the way.

Full disclosure, this post was like 7 dashed-off bullet points that were rewritten by Claude 3.7 Sonnet within Cursor.