Recap vs Recall

Recap is an open-source Chrome extension that summarizes any portion of a webpage through ChatGPT. Its Smart Split approach breaks articles into passages so you can recap a single section, a highlighted selection, or the full page without leaving the browser. Install it from the Chrome Web Store link on recapext.xyz and run summaries from the toolbar icon.

Full-page summarizers like built-in browser readers dump one block of text at you. Recap splits long articles first, which makes it easier to digest news, docs, or research posts section by section. You trade the simplicity of a one-click whole-page summary for finer control over which passage gets condensed.

Students, researchers, and heavy readers who live in Chrome use it to skim long articles faster. The site lists contact at [email protected], credits builder Yaozhi Wang, and was featured by The Rundown newsletter.

Recall is a personal AI knowledge base and summarizer that saves articles, YouTube videos, podcasts, PDFs, and notes in one place. It turns each saved item into a summarized card, tags it automatically, and links related ideas in a knowledge graph you can browse or chat with. You pick the AI model for questions, including ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and answers can draw on your saved library, the open web, or both.

Where NotebookLM locks you into one notebook per project and Obsidian expects you to build every link by hand, Recall treats lifelong learning as one growing library. It captures web content in a click, summarizes it, connects it without manual filing, and adds spaced repetition quizzes so saved material actually sticks. The trade-off is less team workspace structure than Notion and less local-first control than Obsidian.

Recall fits researchers, founders, students, and heavy readers who save more than they can reread. Browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, plus iOS and Android apps, make it easy to clip on the go and pick up in the web app later.