How I built a Chrome extension that speaks your notifications aloud — and the two Manifest V3 problems nobody warned me about

I counted how many times I glanced at a notification during a coding session last week.

Thirty-four times. Only four needed my attention.

So I built Serious Notification — a Chrome extension that speaks browser notifications aloud, but only when they match keywords you set. Type "failed" and only hear build errors. Type "urgent" and only hear what actually matters. Everything else stays silent.

It took a weekend to build the core. The two Manifest V3 architectural problems I hit along the way took longer to figure out. Neither of them is well documented. Here's both.

Problem 1: You can't intercept the Notification API in a regular content script