makethisbetter

Name: makethisbetter-js
Author: makethisbetter

Drop-in widget for AI-powered user feedback and automated fixes.

Why

You ship with AI agents. Your users hit bugs you never see in dev. They leave. You never find out why.

This widget gives your users a way to report exactly what went wrong — annotated screenshot, console errors, DOM state, browser info — in two clicks. AI triage turns that into a structured task your coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) picks up automatically. The agent ships the fix. The user gets notified.

No more "can you describe what happened?" No more lost screenshots in Slack. The full loop, from frustrated user to shipped fix, runs without you context-switching.

Quick Start

CDN (2 lines)

<script src="https://unpkg.com/makethisbetter@1"></script>
<script>
  MakeThisBetter.init({ projectKey: 'mtb_proj_YOUR_KEY' })
</script>

npm

npm install makethisbetter

import { MakeThisBetter } from 'makethisbetter'

MakeThisBetter.init({ projectKey: 'mtb_proj_YOUR_KEY' })

That's it. A feedback tab appears on your page.

How It Works

User clicks feedback tab
  -> Annotates the problem (click to pin, drag to draw)
  -> Adds a comment
  -> Submits
     +-- Screenshot captured automatically
     +-- Console errors collected
     +-- Page context assembled (URL, browser, OS, selectors)
     +-- Sent to Make This Better API
     +-- AI asks a clarifying question if needed
  -> Dashboard shows structured feedback
  -> AI triage produces an agent-ready task
  -> Your coding agent picks it up and ships the fix
  -> User gets notified: the fix is live

Framework Guides

React / Next.js

// app/providers.tsx (App Router) or pages/_app.tsx (Pages Router)
'use client'
import { useEffect } from 'react'

export function FeedbackProvider() {
  useEffect(() => {
    import('makethisbetter').then(({ MakeThisBetter }) => {
      MakeThisBetter.init({
        projectKey: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_MTB_KEY!,
        user: { id: userId, email }
      })
    })
    return () => {
      import('makethisbetter').then(({ MakeThisBetter }) => MakeThisBetter.destroy())
    }
  }, [])
  return null
}

Vue / Nuxt

// plugins/makethisbetter.client.ts (Nuxt) or main.ts (Vue)
import { MakeThisBetter } from 'makethisbetter'

export default defineNuxtPlugin(() => {
  MakeThisBetter.init({
    projectKey: useRuntimeConfig().public.mtbKey,
  })

  return {
    provide: { mtbDestroy: () => MakeThisBetter.destroy() }
  }
})

Astro

<!-- src/components/Feedback.astro -->
<script>
  import { MakeThisBetter } from 'makethisbetter'
  MakeThisBetter.init({ projectKey: import.meta.env.PUBLIC_MTB_KEY })
</script>

Rails

<%# app/views/layouts/application.html.erb %>
<body>
  <%= yield %>

  <%# Turbo replaces <body> on every visit, taking any script-appended element
      with it. Render the host yourself and mark it permanent, or the widget is
      rebuilt after each navigation and anything mid-flight — a half-written
      report, a screen recording — is lost. %>
  <div id="mtb-widget-host" data-turbo-permanent></div>

  <% if current_user&.admin? %>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/makethisbetter@1"></script>
    <script>
      MakeThisBetter.init({
        projectKey: '<%= Rails.application.credentials.mtb_project_key %>',
        user: { id: '<%= current_user.id %>', email: '<%= current_user.email %>' }
      })
    </script>
  <% end %>
</body>

The host must sit inside <body> — Turbo pairs permanent elements by id within
the body snapshot, so one placed in <head> is never matched and nothing
happens. It needs both the id and the attribute; either alone does nothing.

Only Turbo-driven apps need this. React, Vue and Svelte routers re-render inside
their own container and never replace <body>, so the host survives on its own.

Plain HTML / Static Sites

<script src="https://unpkg.com/makethisbetter@1"></script>
<script>
  MakeThisBetter.init({ projectKey: 'mtb_proj_YOUR_KEY' })
</script>

Features

Annotation

Click any element to pin it, or drag to draw a freeform highlight. The SDK captures the element's CSS selector, text content, and position.

Interaction Replay

Switch to Replay mode in the toolbar to capture an Interaction Replay (up to 60 seconds). It records rrweb DOM mutations and interaction events. It does not capture screen video or audio and does not request browser media permissions. The recorder loads lazily, so there is zero cost until the reporter starts a replay.

What a replay contains

Captured	Not captured
The page's DOM structure and every mutation to it	Passwords, payment-card data, OTPs, access tokens, private keys, and other high-confidence credentials — replaced with `[Filtered]`
Visible text content and ordinary form values	Content inside an element you mark `rr-block` or `rr-mask`
Mouse positions, clicks, scrolls, viewport size	Screen video, audio, camera, microphone
Stylesheets needed to render the replay	Cookies, `localStorage`, HTTP request or response bodies

Sensitive-data filtering is fixed and cannot be disabled through SDK configuration. Ordinary values such as search queries, issue descriptions, and internal form fields remain available because they are often necessary to reproduce a problem.

Excluding an element. Add rrweb's privacy classes to any page region that the SDK must not capture. These classes apply consistently to Interaction Replay, click and input breadcrumbs, annotation metadata, and screenshots:

class="rr-block" — hides the entire marked region while preserving its footprint.
class="rr-mask" — hides text and form-control content while preserving the surrounding layout.

<div class="rr-block"><!-- never appears in a replay --></div>
<span class="rr-mask">Account balance: $12,400</span>

If screenshot or Replay filtering cannot complete, that attachment is silently omitted and the text feedback still submits. Automated filtering cannot identify every site-specific secret, so use rr-block or rr-mask on sensitive application regions.

Frustration Detection

The SDK watches for signals that a user is struggling and proactively offers to collect feedback:

Signal	Trigger
Rage click	3+ clicks on the same element within 1 second
Dead click	Click on a non-interactive element (with console errors)
Dead click (DOM)	Click on interactive-looking element with no DOM response
Rapid navigation	3+ page navigations within 5 seconds
Form failure	Form submission with validation errors
Error page	Landing on a 404/500 error page

Disable with frustrationDetection: false.

AI Clarification

Before submission, an AI assistant may ask one short follow-up question to clarify the real need — avoiding XY problems where users describe their attempted solution instead of the actual problem. Once the exchange is complete, the widget submits the feedback automatically.

Auto-Collected Context

Every submission automatically includes:

Page URL origin and pathname, browser, OS, screen resolution
Error type, script pathname, and line/column location (via window.onerror and window.onunhandledrejection)
Target element selector and text
Annotated screenshot with privacy covers applied before upload (via html-to-image)
Annotation coordinates and draw paths

Internationalization

Built-in support for 7 languages:

Code	Language
`en`	English (default)
`zh-CN`	Chinese (Simplified)
`ja`	Japanese
`ko`	Korean
`es`	Spanish
`fr`	French
`de`	German

Configuration

MakeThisBetter.init({
  // Required
  projectKey: 'mtb_proj_xxx',

  // Optional
  locale: 'en',              // UI language. Unset: falls back to <html lang>, then 'en'
  position: 'right',         // Tab position: 'left' | 'right'
  tabText: 'Feedback',       // Label on the docked tab. Unset: the locale's own wording
  entryMode: 'button',       // 'button' docks a tab | 'api' renders none
  theme: 'auto',             // 'light' | 'dark' | 'auto'
  frustrationDetection: true, // Proactive frustration prompts
  apiUrl: 'https://...',     // Self-hosted API endpoint

  // User identification (recommended).
  // Ignored entirely when a valid userToken/userTokenFn JWT is present —
  // see Identity Verification below.
  user: {
    id: 'usr_123',
    email: '[email protected]',
    name: 'Alex Chen',
  },
})

locale is resolved once, in this order: the locale you pass, then the page's
<html lang> attribute, then en. A tag with no exact match is retried without
its region (fr-CA → fr), and anything still unmatched falls back to en.

Changing the language at runtime

MakeThisBetter.setLocale('zh-CN') switches the language for the tab and for
anything opened afterwards. A popup that is already on screen keeps the language it
was opened in, so a reporter is never re-rendered mid-sentence. Call it before the
reporter opens the widget — for example, in the same place your app applies a
language change.

MakeThisBetter.setLocale('zh-CN')

Identity Verification

Identity verification links feedback to authenticated users and lets them view their own submissions on the feedback board.

Level 0 -- Anonymous (default): No user token. Feedback is anonymous.

MakeThisBetter.init({ projectKey: 'mtb_proj_xxx' })

Anonymous reporters are offered a follow-up: the success card shows an optional
email field, and an address entered there is sent to the reporter endpoint and
kept in localStorage under mtb_reporter_email so the field is not asked for
again on later reports from the same browser. The field is skipped entirely when
user is set or when a JWT already identifies the reporter. Clearing site data
clears it.

Level 1 -- Static token: Pass a pre-generated JWT. Simple, but the token may expire during long sessions.

MakeThisBetter.init({
  projectKey: 'mtb_proj_xxx',
  userToken: 'eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIs...',
})

Level 2 -- Dynamic token (recommended): Pass an async function that returns a fresh JWT. The SDK calls it before each API request, so tokens never go stale.

MakeThisBetter.init({
  projectKey: 'mtb_proj_xxx',
  userTokenFn: async () => {
    const res = await fetch('/api/mtb-token')
    const { token } = await res.json()
    return token
  },
})

When userToken or userTokenFn is set, the widget sends an X-User-Token header with every request. After a successful submission, a "View my feedback" link appears that opens the project board filtered to the user's submissions.

The JWT wins over user. These are not two independent ways to name the
reporter. Whenever the server receives a valid token, it takes the reporter's id,
email and name from the token's sub, email and name claims and discards the
user fields the widget sent alongside them — a claim you leave out is simply not
recorded, even if user carried it. Put everything you want attributed in the
token, and treat user as the anonymous-only path.

Generate tokens server-side using your project's Signing Secret (available in your project settings):

# Rails example
payload = {
  sub: current_user.id,
  email: current_user.email,
  name: current_user.name,
  exp: 1.hour.from_now.to_i,
}
JWT.encode(payload, project.signing_secret, 'HS256')

Conditional Loading

// Only show to beta users
if (user.isBetaTester) {
  MakeThisBetter.init({ projectKey: 'mtb_proj_xxx', user: { id: user.id } })
}

Self-Hosting

The Widget works with any backend — not just makethisbetter.dev. Implement the
Submission Session profile you need from the
Self-Hosting API Specification,
then point apiUrl at your API version root:

MakeThisBetter.init({
  projectKey: 'your-key',
  apiUrl: 'https://feedback.yoursite.com/api/v1',
})

The minimum backend supports the Submission Session flow: create a Session with
multipart context, optionally clarify it with the in-memory Submission Token,
then explicitly finalize or abandon it. The Widget takes care of annotation,
Interaction Replay, frustration detection, and context collection. Anonymous
board handoff and post-submit email capture use two additional optional
operations documented in the specification.

The cloud platform at makethisbetter.dev adds AI triage, dashboard, GitHub/Linear sync, and email notifications on top.

API

import { MakeThisBetter } from 'makethisbetter'

// Start the widget
MakeThisBetter.init(config: MakeThisBetterConfig): void

// Remove the widget and clean up all listeners
MakeThisBetter.destroy(): void

// Open annotation mode from your own UI. Idempotent while already open.
MakeThisBetter.open(): void

// Close annotation mode and restore the page
MakeThisBetter.close(): void

// Show or remove the docked tab on non-touch devices without tearing down
MakeThisBetter.showLauncher(): void
MakeThisBetter.hideLauncher(): void

// Switch the UI language for anything opened afterwards
MakeThisBetter.setLocale(locale: string): void

Your own entry point

A tab docked to the edge of the screen is the right default, but it is not
always right — a full-screen editor, a map, or a phone where every pixel is
spoken for. Set entryMode: 'api' to render no tab at all and open the widget
from wherever the entry point belongs in your product:

MakeThisBetter.init({ projectKey: 'mtb_proj_xxx', entryMode: 'api' })

document.querySelector('#menu-feedback')
  .addEventListener('click', () => MakeThisBetter.open())

In api mode nothing is reachable until you wire up that call, so the widget
logs a warning on init as a reminder. On non-touch devices, showLauncher() can
bring the docked tab back at runtime. Touch devices never render the SDK tab;
put the entry in your own mobile UI and call MakeThisBetter.open() from it.

Architecture

The widget runs inside a Shadow DOM container, isolating its styles from your page. No CSS conflicts, no z-index wars.

Shadow DOM Host (#mtb-widget-host)
+-- Feedback Tab (entry point)
+-- Annotation Toolbar (Mark up / Replay toggle)
+-- Annotation Session (pin + draw overlays)
+-- Comment Popup (description + submit)
+-- AI Clarification Card (follow-up conversation)
+-- Success Card (confirmation)
+-- Frustration Prompt (proactive trigger)

Bundle Size

Format	Size	gzip
IIFE	~77 KB	~23 KB
ESM	~90 KB	~24 KB

The rrweb recorder (~78 KB) is loaded on demand when Interaction Replay starts and is not included in these numbers.

Development

git clone https://github.com/makethisbetter/makethisbetter-js.git
cd makethisbetter-js
npm install
npm run dev          # Dev server at localhost:5173
npm run build        # Build all formats to dist/
npm test             # Run tests
npm run type-check   # TypeScript validation

Package	What it does
Make This Better	The platform — dashboard, AI triage, feedback board
@makethisbetter/mcp	MCP server — your coding agent reads feedback directly
makethisbetter CLI	Terminal tool for managing feedback
makethisbetter Skills	Claude Code skills — `/makethisbetter` in your editor

License

MIT

GitHub repo settings

Description: Drop-in widget for AI-powered user feedback and automated fixes
Homepage: https://makethisbetter.dev
Topics: feedback, widget, ai, mcp, claude-code, cursor, vibe-coding

makethisbetter-js