Frame.ego (Chrome Extension)
Frame.ego is a “boutique” Chrome extension for Frame.io that injects high-fidelity, wildly supportive fake comments into your review feed. It won’t fix your edit — but it will tell you you’re doing an incredible job.
Let’s be honest: being a creative professional is a rollercoaster. One day you’re a visionary, the next you’re staring at a Frame.io review link with 47 comments, half of which start with "Change this..." or "Delete this...".
We’ve all been there. You finish a long edit session, you’re proud of the work, and you just want one person to say, "Lovely work."
That’s why I built Frame.ego.
What is Frame.ego?
Frame.ego is a "boutique" Chrome extension for Frame.io. It doesn't fix your colour grade or trim your fat. Instead, it does something much more important: it tells you that you’re doing a great job.
By injecting a stream of high-fidelity, positive reinforcement comments into the review sidebar, Frame.ego turns a stressful delivery into a victory lap. It’s parody, it’s fun. That's it.
How It Works (The "Magic" Part)
When you open Frame.io, it quietly scans the page, finds where the comments are hidden, and slips in a few extra ones from "The Producer" or "The CEO" saying things like '"Oscar? Grammy? Nobel Peace Prize? Just take them all."' or "Colour grade is cleaner than my browser history."
But under the hood, there’s some pretty neat engineering going on.
1. The Mirror Effect
One of the hardest parts of building this was making the fake comments look real. Frame.io is a complex piece of software that updates constantly. To make our "ego-boosters" blend in, we didn't just guess what a comment looks like—we cloned them.
The extension looks at the code of an existing comment, copies its structure (the CSS classes, the SVG icons for checkboxes, the exact spacing), and then swaps out the text. This means that whether you're using Frame.io V3 or the shiny new V4 "Vapor" interface, the comments look like they belong there.
2. The Hype Engine
We didn't want just one flavour of praise. We built a "Hype Level" slider with three distinct modes:
- Mild: Safe, professional, "looks good" vibes.
- Spicy: Elevated praise that actually makes you feel talented.
- Unhinged: Pure, unadulterated gaslighting. (Sample: "I am afraid to touch this timeline.")
The engine randomly picks from these "banks" of messages and mixes them with fake identities (like "Creative Director" or "Brand Team") to keep the feedback loop feeling fresh.
3. The Ninja Observer
Browsers are dynamic. You might click between different versions or folders within Frame.io without ever refreshing the page. If we only injected the comments once, they’d disappear as soon as you moved around.
To solve this, we used something called a MutationObserver. It’s essentially a digital guard that watches the page 24/7. The moment it sees Frame.io try to draw a comment section, it jumps in and says, "Wait! Don't forget to tell them they're a genius."
Why Build This?
At the end of the day, Frame.ego is a love letter to the creative process. It’s a reminder that while the client’s notes are important, so is the energy you put into the work.
Sometimes you just need to hear that your timeline is "quietly excellent," even if it’s coming from a script I wrote in my home office.
Frame.ego is a parody project and isn’t affiliated with Adobe or Frame.io. But hey, if it makes you smile during a 2 AM edit session, it’s doing its job.
