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Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet

browseros.com

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Re: Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet

#12
post #7

I would prefer this as a browser extension, not as its own browser application.

We would've preferred to build this as browser extension too.

But we strongly believe that for building a good agent co-pilot we need bunch of changes at Chromium C++ code level. For example, chromium has a accessibility tree for every website, but doesn't expose it as an API to chrome extension. Having access to accessibility tree would greatly improve agent execution.

We are also building bunch of changes in C++ for agents to interact with websites -- functions like click, elements with indexes. You can inject JS for doing this but it is 20-40X slower.

Re: Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet

#13
post #12
post #7

I would prefer this as a browser extension, not as its own browser application.

We would've preferred to build this as browser extension too. But we strongly believe that for building a good agent co-pilot we need bunch of changes at Chromium C++ code level. For example, chromium has a accessibility tree for every website, but doesn't expose it as an API to chrome extension. Having access to accessibility tree would greatly improve agent execution. We are also building bunch of changes in C++ fo…

Could you upstream that change in order to make it an extension in the future? I think people would not value it any less.

Re: Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet

#14
post #13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would've preferred to build this as browser extension too. But we strongly believe that for building a good agent co-pilot we need bunch of changes at Chromium C++ code level. For example, chromium has a accessibility tree for every website, but doesn't expose it as an API to chrome extension. Having access to accessibility tree would greatly improve agent execution. We are also building bunch of changes in C++ fo…

Could you upstream that change in order to make it an extension in the future? I think people would not value it any less.

We don't mind upstreaming. But I don't think Google Chrome/Chromium wants to expose it as an API chrome extensions, if not they would've done this long time ago.

From Google's perspective, extension are meant to be lightweight applications, with restricted access.

Re: Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet

#16
post #15

> our agent runs locally in your browser (not on their server) That's definitely a nice feature. Did you measure the impact on laptop battery life in a typical scenario (assuming there is such a scenario at this early stage)

The agent running by itself shouldn't impact battery life, it is similar to a lightweight chrome extension and if you think about it, it's an agent browsing the web like human would :)

If you run LLMs locally (using Ollama) and use that in our browser, that would impact battery life for sure.

Re: Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet

#19
post #17

This is very exciting given the rumor that OpenAI will be launching a (presumably not open source) browser of their own this summer. I've joined your Discord, so will try it soon and report back there. Congrats on launching!

Thank you!

Browser wars have begun.

> that OpenAI will be launching a (presumably not open source) browser of their own this summer.

For sure, won't be open-source. I bet in some parallel world, openAI would be non-profit and actually open-source AI :)

Re: Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet

#20

This looks like a great project. What are the system requirements? And shouldn't they be listed on your website?

we support Mac (apple silicon and intel) and Windows.

hardware requirements are minimal, same as Google Chrome, if you BYOK API keys for agents and are not running LLMs locally.

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