A Chrome extension for Instagram
LookOutPal
A Chrome extension that looks out for your pals :)
- Raises awareness for friends who might be feeling down
- Reads posts, stories, and messages for signs they're struggling
- Suggests supportive comments and messages, written for you
Product overview
Its idea is simple: it looks out for your pals.
On Instagram, LookOutPal checks different people's posts, messages, and stories and analyzes each one to detect signs of depression, sadness, loneliness, or cyberbullying in the comments. If a friend looks like they are feeling down, it kindly suggests that you send them a message.
It also has a generate supportive comment button for each post, giving you something thoughtful, personalized, and supportive to lift the mood of the people around you. By default it skips everyone you aren't actually friends with (you follow them and they follow you back), but you can set it to watch everyone, excluding ads and "Suggested for you."
The problem
The quiet ones aren't always the ones struggling.
We all have friends or people we talk to. Some of my friends love sharing every part of their day, and some keep their cards closer to their chest. But here's the thing: a lot of people hide their depression, and the quiet ones aren't always the ones struggling.
Around 36% of depression cases go undetected, and in Canada, somewhere between 50 and 67% of all cases used to go undiagnosed. That's huge. People are walking around with this, and no one close to them realizes.
But depression usually leaves traces. It shows up in how someone talks, what they post, the small shifts in tone. A friend who notices early can make a real difference, and most of the time they'd want to help if they just knew to look.
And these days, a lot of that life happens online. Social media is where people, teens especially, go to be seen, and many are chasing validation there. The average US teen spends about 4.8 hours a day on social media, roughly 33 hours a week, almost a full work week of scrolling, posting, and watching. That's a lot of signals, if anyone is paying attention.
Sources: NIH, ScienceDirect, Gallup, TheBestVPN
The solution
A caring friend's instincts, riding along as you scroll.
LookOutPal works quietly in the background while you use Instagram normally. Nothing changes about how you scroll.
Watches with you
As you browse, it reads the posts, stories, and messages already on your screen. Ads and "Suggested for you" are always skipped.
Reads the room
An AI model looks for signs of depression, sadness, loneliness, or cyberbullying, and tells genuine distress apart from "this exam is killing me" hyperbole.
Flags gently
Each friend gets a quiet status flag so you can see, at a glance, who might be having a harder time. Never an alarm, never a diagnosis.
Helps you reach out
One tap drafts warm, personalized comments or messages so you always have something thoughtful to send. You stay in control of what goes out.
LookOutPal is deliberately protective. It may overstate risk, and it does not fully grasp every convention of human texting, sarcasm, inside jokes, or the way friends talk. We made it err on the careful side on purpose, so it would rather flag something that turns out to be nothing than miss someone who is genuinely struggling. Treat its flags as a gentle prompt to pay attention, not as a verdict.
Technical implementation
Three simple pieces.
The extension watches, a local server thinks, and an LLM does the heavy reading.
Chrome extension
Built with HTML, CSS, JS
Pulls info from the user's screen on Instagram, batches it, and sends it to the backend. Displays the results, status flags, and the supportive-message buttons.
Local server
Built with Python, FastAPI + Uvicorn, OpenAI SDK
Takes the info from the extension, filters it, and decides how to respond. Calls the LLM for analysis of posts, stories, and message suggestions.
LLM
Provided by OpenRouter
Analyzes the text and images sent from the server. The model can be switched, and currently uses Claude Sonnet.
Be the friend who noticed.
Add LookOutPal to Chrome and start paying a little more attention, quietly, to the people you care about.