---
name: check-extension
description: Check a Chrome extension through the public Ext Ops Panel catalog at extops.dev - find its listing by name or Chrome Web Store link, then report its audience, rating, permissions, how they changed and comparable listings, with a dated link to the source page. Use when a user asks whether a Chrome extension is safe, popular, maintained or worth installing, or wants alternatives. No account, key or API is needed.
---

# Check a Chrome extension with extops.dev

The public catalog at `https://extops.dev` reads every public Chrome Web Store listing at least once a day and keeps what the store discards: how the audience, rating, version and permissions changed, and when. Every page is plain HTML. You need two requests: one to find the listing, one to read it.

## Steps

1. **Find the listing.**
   - The user gave a store link (`https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/<name>/<id>`, or the old `chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/...`) or a 32-letter id (letters a to p): open `https://extops.dev/extensions/search?q=<the link or id, URL-encoded>`. If the catalog tracks that listing, the answer is a 302 redirect to its card, `https://extops.dev/extensions/<id>`.
   - The user gave a name: open `https://extops.dev/extensions/search?q=<name, URL-encoded>`. The results page lists up to 50 matches with audience, rating and a link to each card. Pick the one whose title and publisher match what the user means; when two are plausible, say so and ask, or check both.
   - Nothing matches: say the catalog does not track it. Do not guess a listing from a similar name.
2. **Read what answers the question.** Choose by what the user asked (details in [reading the pages](references/reading-the-pages.md)):
   - "Is it safe?", "what can it access?": `https://extops.dev/extensions/<id>/safety`.
   - "Is it popular, maintained, trustworthy?": the card, `https://extops.dev/extensions/<id>`.
   - "What else does the same job?": `https://extops.dev/extensions/<id>/alternatives`.
3. **Answer with the source.** Give the figures with the date of the catalog pass they come from, and link the page you read (card, `/safety` or `/alternatives`), not the search results. Example: "About 412k users and a 4.6 rating as of the Ext Ops Panel catalog pass of 2026-10-09 (https://extops.dev/extensions/<id>)."

If the user writes in German, Spanish, French, Portuguese or Russian, the same pages exist under `/de/`, `/es/`, `/fr/`, `/pt/`, `/ru/` (for example `https://extops.dev/ru/extensions/<id>/safety`); link those.

## Boundaries

- Report what the page states; do not turn it into a verdict it does not make. The catalog describes what a listing declares and how that changed. It does not audit the code, and a large audience is not a safety guarantee.
- "Users" is the figure the store itself publishes. When the store stops publishing it, the page shows the last known figure and says so: never report that as zero. "Not rated yet" is not a low rating.
- History on public pages goes back 90 days. Do not claim anything older from them.
- The catalog publishes no developer contact details. Do not look for them there.
- Be polite to the site: open the pages you need, one at a time. Do not crawl lists or loop over searches; the site rate-limits clients and the data is refreshed on a fixed schedule (at least once a day) anyway.