Not every reading barrier is on your screen — sometimes the barrier is the sentence itself. Long academic prose, jargon-heavy documentation, or a 4,000-word article you only need the gist of: these are problems a bigger font can't fix.
That's why FocusFlow Pro includes three AI reading tools — Define, Simplify, and Summarize — that work on whatever text you're looking at, right where you're reading. No copying text into another app, no losing your place.
Here's what each tool does, when to reach for it, and how the AI credits that power them work.
📖 Define: Instant Plain-Language Meanings
Stuck on a word? Define gives you an instant, plain-language definition of any word or short phrase — in the same language as the text.
When to use it: dense non-fiction, technical writing, legal or academic prose, or any time a single unfamiliar word is blocking a whole paragraph. If English isn't your first language — or the sentence is written like it expects a specialist — one tap resolves the roadblock without breaking your reading flow.
🪄 Simplify: Hard Passages, Plain Words
Simplify rewrites a difficult passage in short, simple sentences that keep the meaning but drop the complexity.
When to use it: when a paragraph is technically readable but you've read it three times and it still hasn't landed. Dense legislative text, convoluted documentation, jargon-filled health information — select the passage and get a plain-language version you can actually work with. It's also the tool to reach for when fatigue is doing the comprehending for you.
📝 Summarize: The Gist First
Summarize condenses long text into a short, plain-language summary that keeps every key point.
When to use it: long articles where you want the gist before committing, research for an assignment, or triaging whether a page is worth a full read. Select a section to summarize just that part — or run it with nothing selected and FocusFlow will summarize the whole page's main content for you.
🖱️ How to Use the AI Tools
The tools live wherever you happen to be reading:
Option A — From the Right-Click Menu
- Select text on any page — a word, a sentence, or a whole section.
- Right-click the selection.
- Choose Define, Simplify, or Summarize from the FocusFlow menu.
- The answer appears instantly, in the same language as the text.
Option B — From the Sidebar
- Open the FocusFlow sidebar.
- Go to the AI Assistant tab and paste or select the text.
- Pick a tool: Define, Simplify, or Summarize.
- Your remaining monthly credits are shown with each result.
They're also available as tiles in the FocusFlow popup, and inside Reader Mode's Insights panel — where the tools run on the current section of the article you're reading.
A couple of practical notes:
- Define works on a word or short phrase; Simplify and Summarize handle selections up to 20,000 characters — roughly a long-form article.
- If FocusFlow needs a selection (for example, Simplify with nothing highlighted), it tells you plainly instead of guessing.
🎟️ The AI Credits Model, Plainly
The AI tools are part of FocusFlow Pro, and they're metered simply:
- Every Pro license includes 1,000 AI credits per month.
- 1 credit ≈ 1,000 characters of text processed.
- Dictionary definitions and cached answers are free — looking up the same word twice doesn't cost you anything.
- Credits reset every 30 days automatically.
Your remaining balance is always visible: it's shown alongside each result in the sidebar, and the Insights hub → AI & Credits section shows your calls, characters processed, and credits remaining for the month. If you ever run low mid-month, the tools tell you clearly rather than failing silently.
🔒 What Happens to Your Text
The AI tools are the only FocusFlow feature that sends content to FocusFlow's servers — and it's only ever the text you explicitly selected, on a request you explicitly made. Nothing is read, collected, or transmitted in the background; if you don't use the AI tools, no reading content ever leaves your device. Everything else in FocusFlow keeps running entirely in your browser.
Related Reading
- Read Aloud + Reader Mode: FocusFlow's Immersive Reading Stack — let the page read itself with voice highlighting and the floating player.
- FocusFlow v2.10.0: Accounts & Sync, Reading List, To-Do Lists & More — the release that added these tools and a wave of accessibility polish.
Try It Today
The AI tools are included with FocusFlow Pro. Install the extension, select any tangled sentence on the web, and right-click your way to a plainer one.