Microsoft Edge
DevTools
A Microsoft Edge engagement focused on AI‑driven in‑browser features, including real‑time content simplification, alongside integrated developer tooling and structured feedback systems.
In Detail
This engagement formed part of Microsoft's "Web We Want" initiative, in collaboration with the World Wide Web Foundation and W3C‑aligned stakeholders, focused on strengthening the relationship between developers and browser vendors.
Working closely with external stakeholders and industry leaders, I helped identify and prioritise opportunities for exploration within the browser, shaping a roadmap of experiments and MVPs to improve both developer feedback loops and the wider browsing experience.
To support that work, I assembled and led a small external engineering team responsible for turning selected ideas into practical demonstrations and early‑stage implementations. My own hands‑on focus was on the developer tooling strand, where I helped define and deliver in‑browser tooling integrated with Microsoft Edge DevTools, enabling developers to capture and submit structured feedback directly within their workflow.
This reduced friction, preserved context, and created a more scalable and actionable pipeline for surfacing real‑world issues and feature requests to internal Microsoft teams.
In a subsequent engagement at Microsoft's Redmond campus three years later, I returned to work further with stakeholders and to help drive experimentation into AI applications within the browser runtime. A key prototype explored real‑time analysis of web pages, intelligently identifying and removing distracting or non‑essential elements to improve clarity, focus, and usability without requiring changes from site authors.
Together, these engagements formed part of a broader programme of exploratory work within Microsoft Edge, investigating how the browser could better support both developers and end users, and preceding wider industry movement towards AI‑assisted browsing experiences.
AI‑Assisted Content Simplification
A prototype exploring how AI could operate directly and autonomously within the browser to improve clarity and focus by interpreting and restructuring live web pages in real time.
The system analysed page structure and content to identify non‑essential or distracting elements, including adverts, overlays, and visual noise, and removed or suppressed them without requiring any changes from the site itself. This resulted in a cleaner, more readable experience, demonstrating how intelligent systems could augment the browsing experience at runtime rather than relying on upstream optimisation.
In‑Browser Developer Tooling
A set of in‑browser tools my team and I developed within Microsoft Edge DevTools to create a direct and structured feedback channel between developers and browser teams. Rather than relying on external issue trackers or fragmented reporting mechanisms, this approach embedded feedback capture directly into the developer workflow.
The tooling enabled developers to raise issues in context, preserving relevant page state and reducing friction in reporting. AI‑assisted analysis was used to help classify and enrich submissions, improving signal quality and making feedback more actionable at scale. This improved both the quality and volume of feedback, forming part of a broader effort to treat developer input as a first‑class signal within the browser platform.
Developer Feedback Pipeline
My team and I developed a structured feedback pipeline connecting in‑browser developer tooling to internal Microsoft systems, transforming ad hoc reports into actionable product signals. Issues raised within DevTools were captured with contextual metadata, enriched through automated classification, and routed into triage workflows, helping browser teams prioritise real‑world problems with greater speed and accuracy.
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John Kavanagh is one of the best front‑end developers I've had the pleasure of working with. Incredibly knowledgeable, great attention to detail – he understands design and why it's important to get it right, and he's also very experienced coding for accessibility. Always professional but with a great sense of fun, John would be an asset to any team and project."
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John Kavanagh is a highly intelligent and truly senior front‑end web developer, who's surprisingly well versed in the arcana of CSS. For Macmillan he was initially churning out static templates on an SCSS BEM architecture, but soon moved on to managing the team (three developers), assigning and tracking tasks using a Trello board he introduced, and helping me nudge the team towards an integrated, Web Components based production pipeline. I enjoyed John's productivity and attitude, and I very much look forward to working together again."
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John Kavanagh is an incredibly talented and efficient developer with great expertise in Gatsby and Contentful. He is incredibly personable and also always willing to share his knowledge. I also appreciated his ability to communicate openly and in a way that allowed me to find a way forward with him.
It was a pleasure to work with John and I would welcome another opportunity to work with him again!"
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John Kavanagh is one of the most professional developers I have worked with. Add to this a synergy between some of the values which Underwired holds in high regard (perfectionism, creativity in all skillets and future facing) and you have someone I wouldn't hesitate to recommend for front‑end development work."
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It's been a pleasure to work with John Kavanagh in the web team at Nando’s. He's a top professional who has prided himself in bringing my designs to life with a high standard since day one. He has a great eye for detail with a clear understanding of user‑centric thinking and is always willing to give great suggestions from a technical standpoint.
I have also really appreciated his positive energy which gives a great lift to the team at every stand up. Any team would be lucky to work with him, as I have experienced myself!"
