Installing the Chrome Extension (Admin Guide)

The browser extension is what shows pulses to your team while they're using AI tools. Without it installed and signed in, no pulses fire and no data is collected. It's the most important step in your rollout.

This article walks you through getting the extension on your own machine so you can see how it looks. For team-wide rollout, see Rolling out the extension to your team.

Step 1: Install from your browser's store

Open Chrome or Edge (any Chromium browser works, including Brave and Arc)
Go to the listing for The GAiGE:
- Chrome: Chrome Web Store
- Edge: Microsoft Edge Add-ons
Click Add to Chrome (or Get on Edge)
Confirm the permissions prompt

The extension icon (a small G) will appear in your browser toolbar. If you don't see it, click the puzzle-piece icon and pin The GAiGE.

Step 2: Sign in

Click the extension icon
Click Sign in
You'll be sent to the platform to authenticate via Clerk
Once authenticated, the extension popup will show your name and the AI tools assigned to you

The extension uses a long-lived API token bound to your account. If you sign out of the platform, the extension will keep working until the token expires (a few weeks). To force it offline, sign out from the extension popup directly.

Step 3: Turn on page pulses

In the extension popup, press Enable page pulses. Chrome asks whether The GAiGE can read and change data on all sites; choose Allow.

This is the step that decides whether your rollout works, so it's worth understanding rather than clicking past.

Pulses are delivered on a cadence, not on visits to a tool's website. When one comes due, the extension puts a card on whatever page the person has open at that moment. Any page could be that page, so Chrome classes the access as broad and makes it optional, which means every person has to grant it themselves. It cannot be granted for them by an admin, force-install included.

Without it, the extension still knows what's due and lists it in its own popup, and the person sees an amber "Page pulses are off" banner. Pressing Start there tells them it can't open on the current page. So the pulse exists, is visible if they go looking, and in practice goes unanswered.

Step 4: See a pulse for yourself

The quickest check is the extension popup: anything due sits under Ready now, and pressing Start opens it on the page you're on.

Otherwise, wait for a scheduled one. The AI Pulse fires three times a week per assigned tool, spread across the week inside working hours (Monday to Friday, 9:30am to 4pm by default, or your organisation's window if you've set one). Answer it, and the response reaches your dashboard within a minute.

If nothing is ever due, check that you're assigned to at least one tool and that the pulse is active. Why is response rate low? covers the rest.

Browser support

The extension is built on Manifest V3 and works in:

Google Chrome (preferred)
Microsoft Edge
Brave
Arc
Other Chromium-based browsers

It does not currently work in Firefox or Safari.

Permissions explained

At install time, the extension asks for:

Storage: to keep the person's pulses, schedule and unsent answers on their own machine
Alarms: a once-a-minute timer that checks whether a pulse is due, and a fifteen-minute one that re-syncs the pulse list
Scripting and tabs: to place the pulse card on the current page
Access to thegaige.com and api.thegaige.com: to sign in and send answers

Broad site access (<all_urls>) is optional and requested separately, via Enable page pulses. A pulse can surface on any page, and Chrome offers no narrower way to describe that.

The extension does not read or send the content of any page. It reads the current tab's address once, on the person's own machine, purely to rule out pages no extension may draw on (chrome://, edge://, about:, the Chrome Web Store). No web address is ever transmitted. See What data we collect and how we use it for the full story.

What if my team is on a managed Chrome (Workspace / MDM)?

You can deploy the extension via Google Workspace's Force-installed apps or any MDM that supports Chrome enterprise policies. See Rolling out the extension to your team for the manifest details.

Related: Rolling out the extension to your team · Troubleshooting: extension not loading pulses · How user data is handled