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Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

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Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#21

Post by jonasnelle »

pacifi30 wrote: post #18
jonasnelle wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! We think of the browser as an authoring tool where you create, test and refine skills. After you've done that, the API is great for cases where you want to incorporate Autotab into a larger data flow or product. For instance, say Company A has taught Autotab to migrate their customers' data - so their customers just see a sync button in the Company A product, which kicks off a Autotab run via API. Same for re…

Understood! How does it work if we have several different restaurants to order from, do I need to record each ordering session and create skills for each restaurant or it can infer on its own given the task to order from a restaurant. Secondly, any docs or samples to see how to integrate this with your API?

Depends on how different the flows are for different restaurants. If they're just different names but use the same booking system you'd typically use an input and have Autotab find the correct restaurant first. If they're totally different booking systems you can try the instruct (open ended agentic) step but my guess is that will be too slow and unreliable for now, so you'd probably want to record different skills for each.

Docs are here with sample code: https://docs.autotab.com/api-reference

Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#22

Post by alexirobbins »

replwoacause wrote: post #19
alexirobbins wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, what would you be interested in using Autotab for?

Automating the creation of test orders in our Ecom and ERP tools is one possible use case I can think of, though I’m sure I’d find others in my day to day (possibly around some of the rote tasks I have in Confluence or DevOps)

That sounds like a really good use case! we're constrained by model costs but are interested in offering a lower cost plan – if you email me I'll see what we can do alexi@autotab.com

Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#23

Post by hailpixel »

replwoacause wrote: post #16

Looks nice. Anybody else in this space? This one is on the pricier end but I’m just a single user so maybe not the target customer

AskUI could be a solution. It's also not just in browser, but the whole desktop: https://github.com/askui/vision-agent

Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#24

Post by smashah »

jonasnelle wrote: post #12
smashah wrote: post #10

If this was an OSS project automating a specific service many HN-ers would come and bleet about TOS violations & being scared/wary of C&Ds. How does this not violate TOS? Do you have legal protection set up from megacorps trying to bully you with legal threats? Automation despite TOS via Adversarial Interop should be a Digital Human Right. Godspeed.

This has been much less of an issue than I would have expected - Autotab is optimized for reasoning heavy tasks in core systems that require high reliability over being really fast at doing giant scrapes. More automating leads in Salesforce, tickets in Jira and data in Airtable than hawking tickets.

Just want to reiterate I fully support what you're doing and I despise the megacorps that send out legal threats to small companies/OSS devs but according to their overbroad TOS they do not make distinctions between the types of automations and reasoning behind them - technically, they would argue, both you and your users are violating TOS. I'm sure you have already, but make sure the legal help at YC give you the ammo you need to protect yourself and your customers when some of them randomly start getting banned.

As more and more AI Agent enabled tooling comes out, this will become a bigger issue (the fact that people are automating these services against the TOS) so it's good if everyone who can get legal help has and shares the tactics to fight back against any civil TOS-based legal threats so we are all protected.

Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#25

Post by replwoacause »

hailpixel wrote: post #23
replwoacause wrote: post #16

Looks nice. Anybody else in this space? This one is on the pricier end but I’m just a single user so maybe not the target customer

AskUI could be a solution. It's also not just in browser, but the whole desktop: https://github.com/askui/vision-agent

Thanks! Looks promising!

Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#26

Post by handfuloflight »

jonasnelle wrote: post #14
pacifi30 wrote: post #13

Pretty slick. I recorded a session for ordering from a restaurant website, and it did repeat the entire workflow. It had some issues with a modal popped up but all in all well done! We have been trying to robotify the task of ordering from restaurant for our clients and seems like your solution can work well for us. I am guessing that you want your users to use Autotab browser, what is use for API?

Thanks! We think of the browser as an authoring tool where you create, test and refine skills. After you've done that, the API is great for cases where you want to incorporate Autotab into a larger data flow or product. For instance, say Company A has taught Autotab to migrate their customers' data - so their customers just see a sync button in the Company A product, which kicks off a Autotab run via API. Same for re…

Is the API also charged based on runtime? And I'm assuming that workflow happens in the cloud? What if it's behind a login? What if that login requires 2FA?

Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#27

Post by pugio »

I love the idea - owning the browser definitely seems like the right approach.

I tried it out on a workflow I've been manually piecing together and it gave me a bunch of "Error encountered, contact support" messages when doing things like clicking on a form input field, or even a button.

The more complex "Instruction" block worked correctly instead (literally things like "click the "Sign In" button), but then I ran out of the 5 minutes of free run time when trying to go through the full flow. I expect this kind of thing will be fixed soon, as it grows.

In terms of ultimate utility, what I really want is something which can export scripts that run entirely locally, but falling back to the more dynamic AI enhanced version when an error is encountered. I would want AutoTab to generate the workflow which I could then run on my own hardware in bulk.

Anyway, great work! This is definitely the best implementation I've seen of that glimpsed future of capable AI web browsing agents.

Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#28

Post by alexirobbins »

handfuloflight wrote: post #26
jonasnelle wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! We think of the browser as an authoring tool where you create, test and refine skills. After you've done that, the API is great for cases where you want to incorporate Autotab into a larger data flow or product. For instance, say Company A has taught Autotab to migrate their customers' data - so their customers just see a sync button in the Company A product, which kicks off a Autotab run via API. Same for re…

Is the API also charged based on runtime? And I'm assuming that workflow happens in the cloud? What if it's behind a login? What if that login requires 2FA?

Yep exactly. Authentication is primarily handled with session data, so passwords never leave your device, but we also support setting secrets.

Here is more info on auth and security: https://docs.autotab.com/manual/security

For 2FA, different users take different approaches. Everything from teaching Autotab to pull auth codes from their email, to setting intervention requests at the top of their skills, to enterprise integrations that we support with SSO and dedicated machine accounts.

Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#29

Post by alexirobbins »

pugio wrote: post #27

I love the idea - owning the browser definitely seems like the right approach. I tried it out on a workflow I've been manually piecing together and it gave me a bunch of "Error encountered, contact support" messages when doing things like clicking on a form input field, or even a button. The more complex "Instruction" block worked correctly instead (literally things like "click the "Sign In" button), but then I ran o…

sorry you encountered that issue! what website was the form on? we'll see if we can catch the error!

curious what you mean by generating the workflow that you run on your own hardware? Is this different than running Autotab locally?

Re: Show HN: Autotab – Programmable AI browser for turning web tasks into APIs

#30

Post by pugio »

alexirobbins wrote: post #29
pugio wrote: post #27

I love the idea - owning the browser definitely seems like the right approach. I tried it out on a workflow I've been manually piecing together and it gave me a bunch of "Error encountered, contact support" messages when doing things like clicking on a form input field, or even a button. The more complex "Instruction" block worked correctly instead (literally things like "click the "Sign In" button), but then I ran o…

sorry you encountered that issue! what website was the form on? we'll see if we can catch the error! curious what you mean by generating the workflow that you run on your own hardware? Is this different than running Autotab locally?

Hah, looks like you guys found my account error via my profile email, nice! Thanks for fixing that bug. I'll try again tomorrow when the fix is pushed.

My other request is probably not in line with your business model. I get the sense that Autotab is always communicating with some server on your end, probably for the various bits of AI functionality. What I was asking for is the ability to export the actions/workflow as, say, a python script (like a Selenium script, or even better, a script which drives your browser) which performs the actions in the Autotab workflow.

I need AI understanding when creating the workflow, or healing in case of an error, but I don't always need it when just executing a prepared script. In those (non AI needed) cases, I don't really want to use up my runtime minutes just because I'm executing a previously generated workflow.

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