I use to build my own like this with the VB web browser control. I had tons of automation built in for a lot of tasks but it becomes too much to keep up with. I've looked into headless chrome but it's not as cool as working in the Visual Studio and being able to pause and just develop on the fly.
Honestly it was incredibly cool but websites just get more and more complicated. From like 2004 to maybe 2014-2016 it was great. Somewhere after that, I'm not sure, something changed, maybe me, but it just became too much.
The web standard really has exploded since that time range you mentioned. Nowdays there's a native browser API for text-to-speech. It's easier to generate speech for an article you wrote than it is to style an option in a native <select> element
Honestly it was incredibly cool but websites just get more and more complicated. From like 2004 to maybe 2014-2016 it was great. Somewhere after that, I'm not sure, something changed, maybe me, but it just became too much.