[HN Gopher] Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet
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Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet
Hey HN, we're a YC startup building an open-source, privacy-first
alternative to Perplexity Comet. No invite system unlike bunch of
others - you can download it today from our website or GitHub:
https://github.com/browseros-ai/BrowserOS --- Why bother building
an alternative? We believe browsers will become the new operating
systems, where we offload much bunch of our work to AI agents. But
these agents will have access to all your sensitive data - emails,
docs, on top of your browser history. Open-source, privacy-first
alternatives need to exist. We're not a search or ad company, so
no weird incentives. Your data stays on your machine. _You can use
local LLMs with Ollama_. We also support BYOK (bring your own
keys), so no $200 /month plans. Another big difference vs
Perplexity Comet: our agent runs locally in your browser (not on
their server). You can actually watch it click around and do stuff,
which is pretty cool! Short demo here: https://bit.ly/browserOS-
demo --- How we built? We patch Chromium's C++ source code with
our changes, so we have the same security as Google Chrome. We also
have an auto-updater for security patches and regular updates.
Working with Chromium's 15M lines of C++ has been another fun
adventure that I'm writing a blog post on. Cursor/VSCode breaks at
this scale, so we're back to using grep to find stuff and make
changes. Claude code works surprisingly well too. Building the
binary takes ~3 hours on our M4 Max MacBook. --- Next? We're just
2 people with a lot of work ahead (Firefox started with 3 hackers,
history rhymes!). But we strongly believe that a privacy-first
browser with local LLM support is more important than ever - since
agents will have access to so much sensitive data. Looking forward
to any and all comments!
Author : felarof
Score : 94 points
Date : 2025-07-10 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.browseros.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.browseros.com)
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Congrats!
|
| How are you planning to make the project sustainable (from a
| financial, and dev work/maintenance pov)?
| patrickaljord wrote:
| my guess is it's just an electron app or chromium wrapper with
| an ollama wrapper to talk to it (there are plenty of free open
| source libs to control browsers).
| janalsncm wrote:
| "Just" is a four-letter word :)
|
| When someone in their infinite wisdom decides to refactor an
| api and deprecate the old one, it creates work for everyone
| downstream.
|
| Maybe as an industry we can agree to do this every so often
| to keep the LLMs at bay for as long as possible. We can take
| a page out of the book of the maintainers of moviepy for
| shuffling their apis around, it definitely keeps everyone on
| their toes.
| moscoe wrote:
| You don't have to guess, it's open source
| felarof wrote:
| We are a chromium "wrapper"
|
| But we are much more performant than other libs (like
| playwright) which are written in JS, as we implement bunch of
| changes at chromium source code level -- for example, we are
| currently implementing a way to build enriched DOMtree
| required for agent interactions (click, input text, find
| element) directly at C++ level.
|
| We also plan to expose those APIs to devs.
| felarof wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| plan is to sell licenses for Enterprise-version of browser,
| same as other open-source projects.
| eGQjxkKF6fif wrote:
| Whats the roadmap looking like for Linux?
|
| I don't have Mac or Windows.
| felarof wrote:
| this is on our radar, we plan to have it ready by early next
| week!
|
| still a team of 2 people, so bunch things on our plate.
| layer8 wrote:
| I would prefer this as a browser extension, not as its own
| browser application.
| felarof wrote:
| 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.
| esafak wrote:
| Could you upstream that change in order to make it an
| extension in the future? I think people would not value it
| any less.
| felarof wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| Would this be possible for Firefox?
| daureg wrote:
| > 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)
| felarof wrote:
| 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.
| zebomon wrote:
| 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!
| felarof wrote:
| 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 :)
| closetkantian wrote:
| This looks like a great project.
|
| What are the system requirements? And shouldn't they be listed on
| your website?
| felarof wrote:
| 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.
| paul7986 wrote:
| So would this or any AI browser go out and fetch a list of the
| best deals for my trip to Iceland? After Show me all the options
| it has found for flights, hotels, car rentals and show
| cheapest/best prices with all details (fly out of and into with
| times) to even allow me to pay for each item on same page I asked
| it to do so? As well it could group the overall best deal with
| details and then i can just click to pay instantly and or make
| some edits.
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(page generated 2025-07-10 23:00 UTC)