[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":378},["ShallowReactive",2],{"project-42898201":3},{"id":4,"name":5,"line":6,"line_source":7,"title":8,"url":9,"domain":10,"maker":11,"posted_at":12,"year":13,"points":14,"comments":15,"rank_in_year":16,"shown_in_year":17,"top":18,"tier":19,"category":20,"subcategory":21,"format":22,"keywords":23,"reception":28,"sentiment":29,"stance_mix":30,"scored_comments":35,"aspects":36,"strip":44,"post_text":46,"what":47,"said":91,"maker_in_thread":192,"shape":202,"grid":207,"attempts":336,"same_week":341,"maker_shows":45,"maker_hidden":371,"reader_version":372,"card":373},"42898201","Meha","We're building a desktop app for browser-based AI agents","title","Show HN: We're building a desktop app for browser-based AI agents","https:\u002F\u002Fmeha.ai","meha.ai","jawerty",1738417279,2025,50,56,1248,3837,33,"notable","ai","browser agent","desktop_app",[21,24,25,26,27],"ai agent","chrome automation","playwright","web scraping","curious",-0.2,{"positive":31,"neutral":32,"mixed":33,"critical":34},4,17,1,8,30,{"idea":37,"privacy":39,"performance":42,"docs":43},{"positive":38,"critical":33},3,{"positive":40,"critical":41},0,2,{"positive":40,"critical":38},{"positive":40,"critical":41},[45,40,45,40,33,33,40,33,38,40,33,38,38,38,38,40,38,38,40,38,33,40,45,38,40,33,45,38,38,38,40,38,40,38,33,40,33,40,40,40],5,"What's up HN!\n\nThis is Jared and Art. We met on HN and started building together.\n\nOver the last few months we've been thinking a lot about how AI agents are going to impact the future. We want agents to be something that's actually useful for normal people as well as the 10x'ers. This lead us to building Meha over the last few months, our first swing at our vision! We saw OpenAI release Operators then we said f*k it let's post.\n\nMeha is a desktop app that uses your Chrome browser to execute tasks in the background. It controls your installed Chrome browser and uses LLMs with playwright to pla",{"problem":48,"audience":58,"pricing":62,"motivation":66,"time_to_build":70,"stack":71,"openness":88,"stage":89,"team_size":90},{"value":49,"source":50,"evidence":51},"Automating multi-step browser tasks such as scraping and logging in","maker",[52,54],{"id":53},"post",{"id":55,"by":56,"text":57},"42904044","artabra","Those are still in the cooker, we'll throw them up asap once they're ready. Some demos we will have are: - Logging into twitter and tweeting - Finding information from google…",{"value":59,"source":50,"evidence":60},"normal people and power users wanting browser automation",[61],{"id":53},{"value":63,"source":50,"evidence":64},"Free in beta; Pro version planned",[65],{"id":53},{"value":67,"source":50,"evidence":68},"Make AI agents useful for normal people, not only power users",[69],{"id":53},null,[72,78,82],{"value":73,"source":50,"evidence":74},"Python (Qt app, for now)",[75],{"id":76,"by":11,"text":77},"42903293","This is a python QT app (for now) we're lookin to move to electron however packaging this has been...interesting.",{"value":79,"source":50,"evidence":80},"Playwright",[81],{"id":53},{"value":83,"source":50,"evidence":84},"OpenAI o3-mini",[85],{"id":86,"by":11,"text":87},"42932831","It is not, Meha agent is fully custom except we don’t use our own models we’re using o3-mini for most of the inference","unknown","beta","team",{"praise":92,"objections":105,"requests":139,"questions":161,"alternatives":176},[93],{"value":94,"source":95,"evidence":96},"Interest in the open-source HTML-to-semantic compression algorithm","commenter",[97,101],{"id":98,"by":99,"text":100},"42905365","stormfather","> As well as an algorithm for efficiently converting\u002Fcompressing large html pages into a semantic format. For the love of humanity please open source this. This seems…",{"id":102,"by":103,"text":104},"42904206","pdntspa","I would be very interested in your research on compressing HTML pages!",[106,117,128],{"value":107,"source":95,"evidence":108},"Privacy policy collects too much data",[109,113],{"id":110,"by":111,"text":112},"42904285","skeeter2020","Looked through their privacy policy, and they state the collect and use basically everything they can from your browser & system metadata, to the content you share and\u002For create.…",{"id":114,"by":115,"text":116},"42904993","1shooner","Some analysis I've been reading on the implications of DeepSeek says that model optionality is probably here to stay. If so, I think incorporating model choice would be a…",{"value":118,"source":95,"evidence":119},"Agent performed poorly and hallucinated results",[120,124],{"id":121,"by":122,"text":123},"42905074","Kuinox","I asked it to go on seloger.com, to find \"some flats on paris below 400k\". It went on some specific district of Paris, and didn't put a price citeria then responded how I could…",{"id":125,"by":126,"text":127},"42904010","noahfk","it kept taking me to non existent websites that were a summary of what i asked it for",{"value":129,"source":95,"evidence":130},"Installing desktop software is a concern; prefers native or extension",[131,135],{"id":132,"by":133,"text":134},"42979967","arjunchint","Hey I am also building in the space and launched rtrvr.ai, but we went the route of a Chrome Extension so people don't have to worry about installing random software on their…",{"id":136,"by":137,"text":138},"42903352","cpursley","Please please please don’t move to electron and just build something native. Electron desktop software bloat is killing our machines.",[140,145,154],{"value":141,"source":95,"evidence":142},"Open source the HTML compression SDK",[143,144],{"id":98,"by":99,"text":100},{"id":102,"by":103,"text":104},{"value":146,"source":95,"evidence":147},"Local version using own API keys",[148,151],{"id":149,"by":11,"text":150},"42904390","Thank you for the feedback. Personally besides using our API server, we would like to find another way to deploy to anyone who has an issue with this\u002Fwants to run everything…",{"id":152,"by":11,"text":153},"42904335","We have an API server where we execute all the agent reasoning\u002Fplanning jobs then we stream the browser commands to the client. We mention this in the how it works section on the…",{"value":155,"source":95,"evidence":156},"Linux support",[157],{"id":158,"by":159,"text":160},"42903489","jwrallie","So the reason for no Linux support is non technical right? There are literally dozens of us! An easy way to scrape webpages is something I’m interested in, I promise I’ll try it…",[162,169],{"value":163,"source":95,"evidence":164},"Is it a wrapper around browser-use?",[165],{"id":166,"by":167,"text":168},"42913035","xnx","Cool. Is this a wrapper for https:\u002F\u002Fgithub.com\u002Fbrowser-use\u002Fbrowser-use ?",{"value":170,"source":95,"evidence":171},"Is it native or Electron?",[172],{"id":173,"by":174,"text":175},"42903269","delduca","Is it a native app or electron based?",[177,181,185],{"value":178,"source":95,"evidence":179},"browser-use",[180],{"id":166,"by":167,"text":168},{"value":182,"source":95,"evidence":183},"rtrvr.ai (Chrome extension)",[184],{"id":132,"by":133,"text":134},{"value":186,"source":95,"evidence":187},"Playwright aria snapshot",[188],{"id":189,"by":190,"text":191},"42911880","pavelfeldman","There is an open source alternative that might be even better: https:\u002F\u002Fplaywright.dev\u002Fdocs\u002Fapi\u002Fclass-locator#locator-aria-snapshot.",{"comments":32,"answered":193,"key":194},7,[195,198,201],{"id":196,"text":197},"42905510","Oh damn I will definitely look into open sourcing it and making it a sdk",{"id":199,"text":200},"42911123","awesome that's the same reason why I use it. It's basically a balance between the full html and having the markdown type scrapers that are better for just text. Do you mind if I…",{"id":149,"text":150},{"commenters":203,"max_depth":204,"maker_replies":32,"first_comment_mins":205,"lifespan_hours":206},26,6,541,157,[208,210,212,214,215,218,220,222,226,227,228,230,234,236,238,240,242,244,248,249,252,255,257,259,263,265,267,268,269,271,273,276,278,279,280,282,286,288,289,291,293,295,300,302,304,306,309,314,317,321,323,327,331,334],[98,40,45,209,99,40],"project\u002Fpositive\u002Fidea",[196,40,40,211,11,33],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[213,40,45,209,99,40],"42909809",[199,40,40,211,11,33],[216,40,40,217,99,40],"42934246","commenter\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[189,40,33,219,190,40],"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fidea",[110,33,33,221,111,40],"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fprivacy",[223,33,38,224,225,40],"42904372","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fprivacy","idiotsecant",[149,33,40,224,11,33],[114,33,33,221,115,40],[229,33,38,211,56,40],"42905776",[231,33,38,232,233,40],"42907550","project\u002Fmixed\u002Fprivacy","imarkphillips",[235,33,40,224,11,33],"42912488",[121,41,33,237,122,40],"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fperformance",[239,41,38,211,56,40],"42905122",[132,38,40,241,133,40],"other\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[243,31,38,211,56,40],"42903222",[245,45,38,246,247,40],"42903988","project\u002Fneutral\u002Fdocs","iiJDSii",[55,45,38,211,56,40],[250,45,38,251,247,40],"42904120","project\u002Fneutral\u002Fperformance",[253,45,40,254,11,33],"42904199","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fperformance",[256,45,38,251,247,40],"42904271",[152,45,40,258,11,33],"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fpricing",[260,204,38,261,262,40],"42904014","project\u002Fneutral\u002Fidea","sky2224",[264,204,40,224,11,33],"42904063",[166,193,38,266,167,40],"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[86,193,40,266,11,33],[125,34,33,237,126,40],[270,34,40,211,11,33],"42904075",[102,272,45,209,103,40],9,[274,272,40,275,11,33],"42904352","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fidea",[173,277,38,266,174,40],10,[76,277,40,266,11,33],[136,277,33,237,137,40],[281,277,40,211,11,33],"42903475",[283,277,45,284,285,40],"42903666","project\u002Fpositive\u002Fnone","dgfitz",[287,277,38,211,56,40],"42905783",[158,277,38,266,159,40],[290,277,40,211,11,33],"42903515",[292,277,38,266,174,40],"42903912",[294,277,40,211,11,33],"42903986",[296,297,38,298,299,40],"42904600",11,"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fprivacy","xena",[301,297,40,266,11,33],"42904639",[303,297,40,217,299,40],"42905311",[305,297,38,211,56,40],"42905778",[307,297,38,298,308,40],"42905896","orange_puff",[310,311,33,312,313,40],"42904849",12,"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fdocs","phdelightful",[315,311,40,316,11,33],"42904987","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fdocs",[318,319,33,312,320,40],"42904036",13,"anticorporate",[322,319,40,316,11,33],"42904065",[324,319,40,325,326,40],"42904828","commenter\u002Fneutral\u002Fdocs","dang",[328,329,40,241,330,40],"42904293",14,"dotancohen",[332,329,40,217,333,40],"42904853","garbagewoman",[335,329,40,217,330,40],"42911261",[337,340],{"id":338,"t":339,"points":204,"comments":45},"42844219",1738003243,{"id":4,"t":12,"points":14,"comments":15},[342,347,352,357,361,366],{"id":343,"name":344,"points":345,"category":346},"42918902","videotoflip",513,"consumer_social",{"id":348,"name":349,"points":350,"category":351},"42901007","ESP32 RC Cars",335,"hardware",{"id":353,"name":354,"points":355,"category":356},"42908061","Lume",309,"dev_tools",{"id":358,"name":359,"points":360,"category":356},"42889407","Uscope",262,{"id":362,"name":363,"points":364,"category":365},"42877399","Audiocube",253,"creative",{"id":367,"name":368,"points":369,"category":370},"42946918","HN hell",170,"productivity",false,"v2",{"id":374,"name":5,"line":6,"ai":371,"cat":20,"year":13,"points":14,"comments":15,"rec":28,"s":29,"top":18,"kw":375,"maker":11,"domain":10,"tier":19,"attempts":41,"strip":376,"url":9,"mix":377,"praise":94,"objection":107,"sub":21},42898201,[21,24,25,26,27],"5050110130133330330310530153330303101000",[31,32,33,34],1793991112054]