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Show HN: BrowserOS – "Claude Cowork" in the browser

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Re: Show HN: BrowserOS – "Claude Cowork" in the browser

#11

Post by felarof »

Johnny_Bonk wrote: post #8

What would be great is if it could work in the browser like Claude in chrome and communicate (with my control) back to objects on my desktop like my ide for example or really anything

Ohh, interesting, technically this should already be possible. Because we already package gemini-cli into the sidecar (bun) binary. We just have to create a good UX.

What angle are you looking at this from? Is it for convenience? Or do you not like terminal UI and need a web-friendly UI for these agents?

Re: Show HN: BrowserOS – "Claude Cowork" in the browser

#12

Post by felarof »

4b11b4 wrote: post #6

IAM for agents sounds interesting but how is it reliably enforced? You also built evals?

Thanks!

> how is it reliably enforced?

At the chromium level, you have access to every single DOM element and coordinate space around it. So, when a click happens either user or agent, we have a neat way of enforcing required action (either allow it or nullify the click).

We are still at early version. And mostly targeting enterprise sites (like SAP) which don't change that often.

What use case did you have in mind?

Re: Show HN: BrowserOS – "Claude Cowork" in the browser

#14

Post by felarof »

mossTechnician wrote: post #13

> we're adding browser-level guardrails (think IAM for agents) This sounds interesting, but where would I go to see these guardrails and their implementation? I tried searching in the repository and couldn't find them.

We are still in early versions of the feature! Haven't released on our repo yet.

What use case did you have? Happy to show a demo of current version we have (you can hit me up on discord or slack -- links available on our repo)

Re: Show HN: BrowserOS – "Claude Cowork" in the browser

#16

Post by arjunchint »

Hey cool stuff since last update!

I still don't buy the we needed it to be a whole Browser and not a Chrome Extension argument:

- your interface is still literally a chrome extension side panel

- none of the agentic browsers from the bigger players like Atlas and Comet really took off either

I do think the server side integration is required:

- with rtrvr.ai a ton of users are integrating our web agent chrome extension via Remote MCP from chatgpt.com as well as triggering as an API endpoint remotely. Your implementation is limited to only local connections as I understand.

- the biggest unlock for users is running at scale, so just being able to launch a hundred cloud browsers, do a task, and return results while you do other things. So we see hybrid cloud/local execution as the key unlock for this year

Your workflow pipeline is really cool! Any blog post/summary on how you set it up?

Last year was a lot of technical builders exploring the capabilities, and I am excited for this year of making these agentic browsers useful!

Re: Show HN: BrowserOS – "Claude Cowork" in the browser

#17

Post by felarof »

arjunchint wrote: post #16

Hey cool stuff since last update! I still don't buy the we needed it to be a whole Browser and not a Chrome Extension argument: - your interface is still literally a chrome extension side panel - none of the agentic browsers from the bigger players like Atlas and Comet really took off either I do think the server side integration is required: - with rtrvr.ai a ton of users are integrating our web agent chrome extensi…

Thanks!

> whole Browser and not a Chrome Extension argument

Both of us are definitely biased to think our own approach is better :)

But without owning the binary, we couldn't shipped today's feature -- Agent with access to your filesystem and being able to run shell commands like Claude Cowork.

> your interface is still literally a chrome extension side panel

Yep, our interface is a chrome extension to make iterating on the UX faster. But it uses a ton of C++ APIs that we expose under `chrome.browseros.*`

> Your workflow pipeline is really cool! Any blog post/summary on how you set it up?

Thanks! We'll look into publishing a blog soon!

Re: Show HN: BrowserOS – "Claude Cowork" in the browser

#18

Post by johnsmith1840 »

arjunchint wrote: post #16

Hey cool stuff since last update! I still don't buy the we needed it to be a whole Browser and not a Chrome Extension argument: - your interface is still literally a chrome extension side panel - none of the agentic browsers from the bigger players like Atlas and Comet really took off either I do think the server side integration is required: - with rtrvr.ai a ton of users are integrating our web agent chrome extensi…

Extensions are limited though.

One simple example is an extension can't see cross origin iframes. This means it could never do soemthing like fill out a payment form for you if it's an extension.

Limited computation and action space is another as well as bot detection systems.

For example a javascript method trying to automate something like microsoft word in an iframe will have a tough time because the second you inject code in there they will block you.

Re: Show HN: BrowserOS – "Claude Cowork" in the browser

#19

Post by arjunchint »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #18
arjunchint wrote: post #16

Hey cool stuff since last update! I still don't buy the we needed it to be a whole Browser and not a Chrome Extension argument: - your interface is still literally a chrome extension side panel - none of the agentic browsers from the bigger players like Atlas and Comet really took off either I do think the server side integration is required: - with rtrvr.ai a ton of users are integrating our web agent chrome extensi…

Extensions are limited though. One simple example is an extension can't see cross origin iframes. This means it could never do soemthing like fill out a payment form for you if it's an extension. Limited computation and action space is another as well as bot detection systems. For example a javascript method trying to automate something like microsoft word in an iframe will have a tough time because the second you in…

> One simple example is an extension can't see cross origin iframes

Sounds like a skill issue, our web agent is able to interact with cross origin iframes to for example solve captchas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD3afouKPYc

We honestly haven't faced any bot detection or blocking issues. Owning the browser layer exposes to you much more detection just look at Comet getting blocked on Amazon etc.

Re: Show HN: BrowserOS – "Claude Cowork" in the browser

#20

Post by arjunchint »

felarof wrote: post #17
arjunchint wrote: post #16

Hey cool stuff since last update! I still don't buy the we needed it to be a whole Browser and not a Chrome Extension argument: - your interface is still literally a chrome extension side panel - none of the agentic browsers from the bigger players like Atlas and Comet really took off either I do think the server side integration is required: - with rtrvr.ai a ton of users are integrating our web agent chrome extensi…

Thanks! > whole Browser and not a Chrome Extension argument Both of us are definitely biased to think our own approach is better :) But without owning the binary, we couldn't shipped today's feature -- Agent with access to your filesystem and being able to run shell commands like Claude Cowork. > your interface is still literally a chrome extension side panel Yep, our interface is a chrome extension to make iterating…

> But without owning the binary, we couldn't shipped today's feature -- Agent with access to your filesystem and being able to run shell commands like Claude Cowork

Chrome Extension can also access local files and can also execute LLM generated code in sandboxes

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