MindShield v1.1.5: Browser tool adds pause before simple AI requests

MindShield addresses a specific concern about AI adoption: the ease of delegation can erode the user's own problem-solving skills and judgment. Rather than blocking AI outright—an approach most users would reject—the extension introduces a moment of conscious choice. This aligns with a broader line of thinking in digital wellness, where friction can be a feature rather than a bug when it interrupts automatic behavior.

The v1.1.5 update focused on reducing false positives, particularly by improving prompt detection to focus on questions and better distinguish between knowledge-based queries (which tend to be legitimate) and simpler tasks the user could reasonably work through themselves. This tuning is crucial because overly aggressive friction would make the tool annoying and lead users to disable it. The shift in v1.1.0 away from casual statements and normal information sharing reflects this learning.

Privacy is built in from the start: by using WebAssembly to run a compact model (DistilBERT-MNLI) directly in the browser, MindShield avoids the cloud processing that would create a new data liability. This is particularly relevant given ongoing concerns about AI companies' use of user prompts for training and analytics.