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Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

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Re: Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

#131

Post by mattigames »

lolinder wrote: post #122
vharish wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that would ideally mean only reading the content the user would otherwise have gone through. I wonder if that's the case and if it's guaranteed. Maybe some new standards and maybe a user configurable per site permissions may make it better? I'm curious to see how this will turn out to be.

> only reading the content the user would otherwise have gone through. Why? My user agent is configured to make things easier for me and allow me to access content that I wouldn't otherwise choose to access. Dark mode allows me to read late at night. Reader mode allows me to read content that would otherwise be unbearably cluttered. I can zoom in on small text to better see it. Should my reader mode or dark mode or z…

Yeah no, nothing of that helps you bypass the ads on their website*, but scraping and summarizing does, so its wildly different for monetization purposes, and in most cases that means the maintainability and survival of any given website.

I know its not completely true, I know reader mode can help you bypass the ads _after_ you already had a peek at the cluttered version, but if you need to go to the next page or something like that you need to disable reader-mode once and so on, so its a very granular ad-blocking while many AI use cases are about bypassing viewing it at all by a human; and the other thing is that reader mode is not very popular so its not a significant threat.

*or other links on their websites, or informative banners, etc

Re: Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

#133

Post by [deleted] »

mattigames wrote: post #131
lolinder wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only reading the content the user would otherwise have gone through. Why? My user agent is configured to make things easier for me and allow me to access content that I wouldn't otherwise choose to access. Dark mode allows me to read late at night. Reader mode allows me to read content that would otherwise be unbearably cluttered. I can zoom in on small text to better see it. Should my reader mode or dark mode or z…

Yeah no, nothing of that helps you bypass the ads on their website*, but scraping and summarizing does, so its wildly different for monetization purposes, and in most cases that means the maintainability and survival of any given website. I know its not completely true, I know reader mode can help you bypass the ads _after_ you already had a peek at the cluttered version, but if you need to go to the next page or som…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

#134

Post by lolinder »

mattigames wrote: post #131
lolinder wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only reading the content the user would otherwise have gone through. Why? My user agent is configured to make things easier for me and allow me to access content that I wouldn't otherwise choose to access. Dark mode allows me to read late at night. Reader mode allows me to read content that would otherwise be unbearably cluttered. I can zoom in on small text to better see it. Should my reader mode or dark mode or z…

Yeah no, nothing of that helps you bypass the ads on their website*, but scraping and summarizing does, so its wildly different for monetization purposes, and in most cases that means the maintainability and survival of any given website. I know its not completely true, I know reader mode can help you bypass the ads _after_ you already had a peek at the cluttered version, but if you need to go to the next page or som…

> I know its not completely true, I know read-mode can help you bypass the ads _after_ you already had a peek at the cluttered version

What about reader mode that is auto-configured to turn on immediately on landing on specific domains? Is that a robot for the purposes of robots.txt?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/automatic-rea...

And also, just to confirm, I'm to understand that if I'm navigating the internet with an ad blocker then you believe that I should respect robots.txt because my user agent is now a robot by virtue of using an ad blocker?

Is that also true if I browse with a terminal-based browser that simply doesn't render JavaScript or images?

Re: Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

#135

Post by tolerance »

zahlman wrote: post #129
tolerance wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that this is for impatient people; people who think that the prescribed use cases are somehow necessary for their "workflows"; people who subscribe to terms like "cognitive friction" within the context of these use cases; people who are...sort of lazy.

...Why do these lazy people put so much effort into coming up with fancy words to justify that laziness?

That's a really good question. Maybe it's because laziness is associated with a lack of intellect? And certain technologies, like AI and other software, are meant to augment our intellect.

These fancy words carry an intellectual/productive effect. When they're put to use it probably makes people feel like they're getting things done. And they never feel lazy because of this.

Re: Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

#136

Post by debazel »

dotancohen wrote: post #38
felarof wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not today. But wonder if it matter if it the agent is mostly using it for "human" use cases and not scrapping?

Yes it would matter. The AI might be I in your eyes, but it is still A.

My understanding of this product is that this isn't an automated AI scraper, it's simply helping the user navigate pages they've already navigated to themselves.

If any type of AI based assistance is supposed to adhere to the robot.txt, then would you also say that AI based accessibility tools should refuse to work on pages blocked by robot.txt?

Re: Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

#137

Post by throwaway314155 »

zahlman wrote: post #127

> And honestly, we feel like we're constantly fighting the browser we use every day. It's not one big thing, but a series of small, constant frustrations. I'll have 70+ tabs open from three different projects and completely lose my train of thought. And simple stuff like reordering tide pods from amazon or filling out forms shouldn't need our full attention anymore. AI can handle all of this, and that's exactly what…

what a fresh new take

Re: Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

#138

Post by lolinder »

felarof wrote: post #24
xena wrote: post #17

Do you respect robots.txt?

No, not today. But wonder if it matter if it the agent is mostly using it for "human" use cases and not scrapping?

robotstxt.org [0] is pretty specific in what constitutes a robot for the purposes of robots.txt:

> A robot is a program that automatically traverses the Web's hypertext structure by retrieving a document, and recursively retrieving all documents that are referenced.

This is absolutely not what you are doing, which means what you have here is not a robot. What you have here is a user agent, so you don't need to pay attention to robots.txt.

If what you are doing here counted as robotic traffic, then so would:

* Speculative loading (algorithm guesses what you're going to load next and grabs it for you in advance for faster load times).

* Reader mode (algorithm transforms the website to strip out tons of content that you don't want and present you only with the minimum set of content you wanted to read).

* Terminal-based browsers (do not render images or JavaScript, thus bypassing advertising and according to some justifications leading them to be considered a robot because they bypass monetization).

The fact is that the web is designed to be navigated by a diverse array of different user agents that behave differently. I'd seriously consider imposing rate limits on how frequently your browser acts so you don't knock over a server—that's just good citizenship—but robots.txt is not designed for you and if we act like it is then a lot of dominoes will fall.

[0] https://www.robotstxt.org/faq/what.html

Re: Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

#139

Post by nmstoker »

felarof wrote: post #49
doublerabbit wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeBSD, Haiku, Amiga

Sounds good! will look into getting linux build.

Ah, didn't see this until now... I just opened an issue requesting this :)

https://github.com/nxtscape/nxtscape/issues/5

Re: Show HN: Nxtscape – an open-source agentic browser

#140

Post by throwaway314155 »

felarof wrote: post #106
deepdarkforest wrote: post #99

This is definitely a winners take all market. Kudos for giving it a shot, but imo browser projects are just too big for a team of 2/3. Plus, google has already demoed at IO the first hint at this. IMO you just cannot move fast enough to grab enough market share as a first/second mover before google just does it on chrome, and that's assuming you can outcompete with Dia in the first place. Even browser-use can do this…

Thanks for the honest feedback! Definitely agree there is good amount of competition here. But we do think there is a gap in the market for open-source, community driven and privacy-first AI browser. (Something like Brave?)

As long as you don't implement ANY cryptocurrency features or ad-replacement features. I realize you've gotta make money at some point but the current browser landscape is so damn depressing. Even Mozilla Firefox has lost the trust of some of its diminishing userbase.
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