---
title: tl;dr FAQ
description: Common questions about the tl;dr extension and web app.
canonical: https://tl-dr.cc/llms-faq.md
---

# FAQ

## What is tl;dr?

tl;dr is a free Chrome extension that generates AI summaries of articles, videos, PDFs, and newsletters. Summaries appear in a side panel; you can chat with them, share them as public pages, and browse trending articles at [tl-dr.cc/trending](https://tl-dr.cc/trending).

## Is my summary public?

By default, summaries of publicly-accessible URLs create a public share page at `tl-dr.cc/s/{slug}`. Summaries of private content (e.g. Gmail, internal dashboards, anything behind auth, anything a user marks private, or domains the service auto-flags as private) are never made public. Users can also enable "private by default" in their account settings.

Public share pages are indexed by search engines and included in trending aggregates. Private summaries live only in the user's own history.

## How is "trending" computed?

Trending aggregates across all public summaries by canonical URL (tracking parameters like `utm_*`, `fbclid`, `gclid` are stripped before aggregation). An article's trending rank within a period (today / week / month) is the count of distinct summaries created during that window. Private summaries are excluded.

## What AI model powers the summaries?

tl;dr uses Anthropic's Claude models. The exact model may vary by content type and tier.

## How accurate are the summaries?

Summaries are generated from the full article/transcript/PDF text when accessible. For videos, accuracy depends on YouTube transcript quality. For paywalled articles, the summary is generated from whatever content the extension can access in the browser — usually the article body if the user can see it. Always click through to the original for primary sourcing.

## Can I use summaries for training data?

Please respect the source article's license. tl;dr summaries themselves are generated content — treat them as you would any third-party AI-generated excerpt. If you're an LLM crawler, the machine-friendly endpoints at [llms.tl-dr.cc](https://llms.tl-dr.cc) are designed for you; please use them instead of scraping HTML.

## How do I contact tl;dr?

See [tl-dr.cc](https://tl-dr.cc) for support channels.