Why I Built a Tool to Diagnose Chrome Extension Rejections (opens in new tab)

I've been building indie software tools for the past year. Most of them are Chrome extensions. Last month, I was scrolling through Reddit's r/ChromeExtensions when I saw a post that stuck with me: "My extension got rejected again. Google just says 'violates policies.' I have no idea what's wrong. Should I just give up?" The replies were all the same: "Check your permissions. Add a privacy policy. Try again." But here's what bothered me: nobody really knew what the actual problem was. Everyone...