[cosmic_cheese]

> the OS needs to provide some sort of hook into this capability natively for both maximum adoption and also ease of use (for both developer and end user)

I’m absolutely of this mind, but unfortunately it also depends on developers’ willingness to make use of these hooks, and it’s becoming increasingly uncommon for third party apps to have any integration or automation affordances, especially any specific to any particular platform. It’s become the norm to ship the absolute bare minimum, which is the lowest common denominator “it runs”.

[KPGv2]

Anki has AnkiConnect which is exactly this, I think

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2055492159

IIRC Yomichan (been a long time since I needed tools like that) is a Chrome extension that lets you mouseover words and it'll show you the meaning. I think you can invoke something in Chrome that will trigger the Anki Connect API and send the info to Anki to create a card.

I've never bothered with this, but I think that's what you're looking for.

[aaldrick]

A great shame, I see your point. I guess it comes down to the developer treating their product as something that could "help people" or something that "pays the bills". Hopefully the former would lead them to caring enough to spend the extra time for these significant QoL improvements.

[tylorr]

This reminds me of the share feature on mobile phones which gets plenty of use by developers. Seems quite possible to make something like this on a standard OS