Show HN: Memex – A proof of concept built in Electron and Chrome Extension

This blog is a summary of a fun 1 month adventure I had with Knowledge Management Systems and building a POC that I thought had potential. It was inspired by so many of the products I see on Hacker News. I’ve open sourced all the code + written down some notes on my insights/ architecture. Just a warning, the code leaves much to be desired as this was a mini project over 2-3 weekends.

At the moment, I have 3 key layers of the application. The first is Chrome Extension which allows data collection. It tracks all sorts of data such as attention, time on page, scroll/ click and hover behaviour. It then sends this data to the Electron app.

The Electron app receives this data through an API and saves it down locally using PouchDB (data structure is compatible with Apache CouchBD and thus allows easy cloud storage).

Within the Electron app, I use an Express/ NodeJS web server to expose endpoints for functionality with the front end/ receiving data from Chrome Extension.

For the front end I use ReactJS.

If you’re interested, please read the full article! There are lots of videos of the application in action.