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Pulse Chrome extension

Plans: Starter (view only) · Growth · Pro · Agency

The Pulse Chrome extension lets you scan any web page for SEO / AEO / GEO / AI-readiness signals in one click. The scan runs locally in your browser, sends a summary to Clione, and pops up an immediate score (A–F) with a per-signal breakdown.

Use cases:

  • Audit a competitor while browsing — no need to copy URLs into a tool.
  • Spot-check your own products mid-edit ("did that meta description make it?").
  • Build a quick portfolio of scored sites for a sales pitch.
  • Verify that a freshly enriched page now scores higher.

Install​

Search the Chrome Web Store for Clione Pulse or open the listing directly. Click Add to Chrome, confirm the permissions, and you're done.

Developer install (sideload, for testing)​

If you want a pre-release build or you're debugging:

  1. Download the clione-pulse-public.zip from your Clione contact.
  2. Extract it somewhere local.
  3. Open chrome://extensions/ in Chrome.
  4. Enable Developer mode (top right).
  5. Click Load unpacked.
  6. Select the extracted folder.

The extension icon appears in your toolbar. Pin it for quick access.

First-run setup​

The extension works out of the box for one-click scans, but to push scans into your Clione dashboard (and get them attributed to your tenant), connect it once:

  1. Click the extension icon → gear icon (Settings).
  2. Fill in:
    • Clione API URL — https://api.clione.ai.
    • API Key — generated from the dashboard.
  3. Click Save.

Where to get the API key​

  1. Open your Clione dashboard.
  2. Sidebar → Pulse → Setup tab.
  3. Click + New Key.
  4. Copy the key immediately — it's only shown once (Clione stores a hash, not the raw key).
  5. Paste it into the extension settings.

The same Setup tab shows your Clione API URL — copy it if you're on a custom-hosted instance.

Using the extension​

Scan the current tab​

  1. Open any web page (your own store, a competitor, anything).
  2. Click the Clione Pulse icon in the toolbar.
  3. The popup shows the grade (A–F), a numeric score, and a quick breakdown.
  4. Click See full report to open the full per-signal breakdown in a tab.

The scan is triggered only when you click. The extension does not auto-scan every page you visit — telemetry is explicit-action-only (this was fixed in 0.1.x).

Public Pulse page​

After scanning, you'll see a Share this scan button. It copies a public URL like app.clione.ai/p/<hostname> that anyone can open to see the latest score.

Per-signal breakdown​

The full report tab shows:

  • SEO — title, description, canonical, robots.
  • AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) — FAQs, semantic HTML, alt text, structured data depth.
  • GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) — JSON-LD, OG tags, Open Graph image, schema authorship.
  • AI Readiness — /.well-known/llms.txt, agent-discovery headers, MCP markers.
  • Performance + safety — Cache-Control, CSP, X-Robots-Tag, mixed content.

Each signal shows Pass / Warn / Fail and a short "why this matters" tooltip. The tooltips link to deeper reading where applicable.

Unlock-full-analysis flow​

Anonymous users (no API key configured) see a basic score and a registration form to unlock the full report. Users with an API key see everything immediately.

Per-browser install​

The extension is Chrome-only today. The codebase is Manifest V3, so the same package will eventually ship to:

  • Chrome / Chromium / Brave — supported today via the Chrome Web Store.
  • Edge — works via sideload; Microsoft Edge Add-ons listing is in review.
  • Arc — supported (Arc uses Chrome extensions natively).
  • Firefox — planned; requires manifest tweaks for the WebExtensions polyfill.
  • Safari — planned; requires conversion to a Safari Web Extension via Xcode.

For unsupported browsers, the public Pulse page (https://app.clione.ai/p/<hostname>) is a fallback — score appears the same way.

Per-storefront-platform behaviour​

The signals scored are storefront-agnostic. Scoring math is identical regardless of platform. What differs is the platform detection (shown in the popup as a chip) and the "Why is my score low" copy in the full report — that copy is tailored to the detected platform:

Scanning a BigCommerce page​

  • Platform detected via bigcommerce-cart-events script or bccdn.com asset hosts.
  • The "Why is my score low" sidebar links into BC-specific fixes (e.g. "Install Schema Injector to surface JSON-LD" if missing).
  • BC Stencil pages that load JSON-LD via the Clione Schema Injector script — Pulse sees the marker comment Clione injects pre-script and credits the page accordingly. If the marker is absent, JSON-LD is scored as missing.

Scanning a Shopify page​

  • Platform detected via cdn.shopify.com asset hosts or session cookies.
  • The "Why is my score low" sidebar links into Shopify-specific fixes (e.g. "Enable Clione JSON-LD theme app embed").
  • Shopify Online Store pages that have the Clione Theme App Extension enabled emit a <!-- clione:jsonld --> comment before the JSON-LD block — Pulse credits this.
  • Shopify Hydrogen / headless: scored as headless (Hydrogen platform chip). The sidebar links into the Hydrogen integration guide.

Scanning a headless page​

  • Platform detected as the underlying framework (Next.js, Remix, Hydrogen, Astro, Sapper, etc.) via response headers and bundle markers.
  • SSR'd pages score the same as classic pages.
  • CSR-only pages (where the meta + JSON-LD only appear after JS) score low — Pulse fetches the raw HTML by design (it's what an LLM crawler sees).

Scanning a non-supported platform​

  • WooCommerce, Magento, Shopware, custom-built — all scan. The platform-specific advice in the sidebar is generic.

Telemetry control​

Each scan is an explicit user action — the extension never auto-scans pages you visit. This is enforced in the extension's content script which only listens for the popup-button click event, not for tabs.onUpdated or any background-page events.

If you don't want any data leaving your browser (e.g. you're scanning a private staging URL):

  • Switch the extension to Local mode in Settings — scores compute locally, no POST to the API.
  • Local mode loses the dashboard sync feature but keeps the per-scan grade and the per-signal breakdown.

Keyboard shortcut​

Bind a keyboard shortcut in chrome://extensions/shortcuts:

  1. Find "Clione Pulse".
  2. Set a shortcut for "Activate the extension" — common choice: Ctrl+Shift+P (Win/Linux), Cmd+Shift+P (Mac).
  3. Hit the shortcut on any tab to scan instantly.

The shortcut works across all tabs without you needing to click the toolbar icon.

Extension settings reference​

SettingDefaultDescription
Clione API URLhttps://api.clione.aiOverride for self-hosted instances.
API Key(empty)Your tenant's Pulse API key.
Local modeOffIf on, scans don't sync to the dashboard.
Include in incognitoOffIf on, the extension runs in incognito windows.
Show debug logsOffPipes scoring decisions to the browser console.
Default tags(empty)Tags applied to every scan from this device — useful for filtering on the dashboard ("client-A" / "competitor-research").

Telemetry and privacy​

What the extension sends to Clione per scan:

  • The URL (full URL, including query string).
  • Hostname + path components.
  • The detected platform + page type.
  • Per-signal grades (numeric only — no scraped page content).
  • Browser locale + your country (from IP geolocation server-side).
  • If your API key is configured: your tenant ID, so the scan is attributed to your dashboard.
  • If you submitted the unlock form: your name and email.

What the extension does NOT send:

  • Page content / HTML body.
  • Cookies, session tokens, or any auth from the page being scanned.
  • Browser history.
  • Anything from pages you didn't explicitly click "Scan" on.

The extension respects the Chrome incognito mode preference — disable for incognito if you don't want scans there.

Troubleshooting​

Score in the extension differs from the score on the dashboard — Force-refresh the extension (right-click icon → Manage extensions → toggle off and on). The extension caches the last scoring config for 24h.

Scan returns "robots blocking" — The page has a robots: noindex meta or header. Pulse respects it (otherwise the score would be artificially low for every test/draft page). To force a scan past this, click the Force scan option in the popup — note this scores the page assuming robots would let it through.

API key field shows "invalid" — Most often the key was revoked from the dashboard (Pulse → Setup → Keys table). Generate a new one and paste it in.

Popup says "Failed to fetch" — Network issue or your firewall blocks api.clione.ai. Test with curl -i https://api.clione.ai/healthz to confirm reachability.

Extension doesn't appear in toolbar after install — Click the puzzle icon in Chrome's toolbar → find Clione Pulse → click the pin icon next to it.