[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":441},["ShallowReactive",2],{"project-44020626":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":47,"post_text":49,"what":50,"said":93,"maker_in_thread":235,"shape":248,"grid":252,"attempts":405,"same_week":406,"maker_shows":38,"maker_hidden":433,"reader_version":434,"card":435},"44020626","BrowserBee","A web browser agent in your Chrome side panel","title","Show HN: A web browser agent in your Chrome side panel","https:\u002F\u002Fgithub.com\u002Fparsaghaffari\u002Fbrowserbee","github.com","parsabg",1747568922,2025,153,63,478,3837,13,"notable","ai","browser agent","browser_extension",[21,24,25,26,27],"chrome extension","llm automation","ollama","browser automation","debated",0.026,{"positive":31,"neutral":32,"mixed":33,"critical":34},8,15,0,9,32,{"privacy":37,"performance":39,"idea":40,"execution":42,"design":44,"pricing":46},{"positive":33,"critical":38},4,{"positive":33,"critical":33},{"positive":41,"critical":41},1,{"positive":41,"critical":43},3,{"positive":45,"critical":33},2,{"positive":33,"critical":41},[41,43,33,43,33,48,43,48,33,43,41,33,48,33,33,48,43,41,33,33,33,48,33,41,43,33,48,43,43,43,43,41,33,41,43,43,43,41,41,48],5,"Hey HN,\n\nI'm excited to share BrowserBee, a privacy-first AI assistant in your browser that allows you to run and automate tasks using your LLM of choice (currently supports Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, and Ollama). Short demo here: https:\u002F\u002Fgithub.com\u002Fuser-attachments\u002Fassets\u002F209c7042-6d54-4fce-92a7-ddf8519156c6\n\nInspired by projects like Browser Use and Playwright MCP, its main advantage is the browser extension form factor which makes it more convenient for day to day use, especially for less technical users. Its also a bit less cumbersome to use on websites that require you to be logged in, as",{"problem":51,"audience":57,"pricing":61,"motivation":70,"time_to_build":75,"stack":79,"openness":90,"stage":91,"team_size":92},{"value":52,"source":53,"evidence":54},"Automating multi-step web tasks in the browser using an LLM, including logged-in sites","maker",[55],{"id":56},"post",{"value":58,"source":53,"evidence":59},"Day-to-day browser users, especially less technical users",[60],{"id":56},{"value":62,"source":53,"evidence":63},"Not monetized directly; user pays own LLM API costs",[64,67],{"id":65,"by":11,"text":66},"44021817","Thanks a lot! :) I might write a short post on the development process, but in short: - started development during Easter so roughly a month so far - developed mostly using Cline…",{"id":68,"by":11,"text":69},"44022286","Good spot. I probably shouldn't have the 2nd most expensive model in the demo! Some of the cheaper models have very similar performance at a fraction of a cost, or indeed you…",{"value":71,"source":53,"evidence":72},"Promote open source AI tools and make browser automation convenient",[73,74],{"id":56},{"id":65,"by":11,"text":66},{"value":76,"source":53,"evidence":77},"Roughly a month, started during Easter",[78],{"id":65,"by":11,"text":66},[80,86],{"value":81,"source":53,"evidence":82},"Playwright",[83],{"id":84,"by":11,"text":85},"44021770","Thank you! :) Would love to explore a FF port. Right now, there are a couple of tight Chrome dependencies: - CDP - mostly abstracted away by Playwright so perhaps not a big lift…",{"value":87,"source":53,"evidence":88},"Chrome extension",[89],{"id":56},"open_source","beta","solo",{"praise":94,"objections":114,"requests":154,"questions":188,"alternatives":205},[95,103],{"value":96,"source":97,"evidence":98},"Clean, simple UI","commenter",[99],{"id":100,"by":101,"text":102},"44022755","jaggs","This looks really well done. I particularly like the simple user interface. A lot of the time these things are unnecessarily complex I feel.",{"value":104,"source":97,"evidence":105},"Works well with Ollama and multiple models",[106,110],{"id":107,"by":108,"text":109},"44022518","matula","Very nice. I tried with Ollama and it works well. The biggest issue is having the Ollama models hardcoded to Qwen3 and Llama 3.1. I imagine most Ollama users have their…",{"id":111,"by":112,"text":113},"44023374","afshinmeh","Looks great! Tried a few examples and models, works very well.",[115,129,137,144],{"value":116,"source":97,"evidence":117},"Sends page content to the LLM, so 'privacy-first' is questioned",[118,121,125],{"id":119,"by":11,"text":120},"44021692","yes, the LLM can invoke observation tools (e.g. read the text\u002FDOM or take a screenshot) to retrieve the context it needs to take the next action",{"id":122,"by":123,"text":124},"44022001","barbazoo","So maybe something we want to be mindful of before using this on banking, health, etc. How is it “privacy-first” then if it literally sends all your shit to the LLM?",{"id":126,"by":127,"text":128},"44022468","hoppp","What makes it privacy first? Shouldn't it use local llm then? Does it send my password to a provider when it signs up to a website for me?",{"value":130,"source":97,"evidence":131},"Token usage and cost are high for web tasks",[132,136],{"id":133,"by":134,"text":135},"44022028","reliablereason","Looks like the example video is extremely expensive. It racks up almost 2$ of usage in about a minute.",{"id":68,"by":11,"text":69},{"value":138,"source":97,"evidence":139},"Struggles with DOM parsing on complex tasks",[140],{"id":141,"by":142,"text":143},"44027188","tnjm","Thanks for building this! It struggled with tasks I asked for (e.g. download the March and April invoices for my GitHub org \"myorg\") -- it got errors parsing the DOM and…",{"value":145,"source":97,"evidence":146},"Gemini 2.5 and OpenAI models error out",[147,151],{"id":148,"by":149,"text":150},"44022281","saadshamim","I keep getting the \"Error: Failed to stream response from [Gemini | OpenAi] API. Please try again.\" - tried valid new keys from both google\u002Fopenai",{"id":152,"by":149,"text":153},"44022385","ah yea 2.0 flash is working. 2.5 doesn't and OpenAi 4.0 and mini models dont work either. The error message should probably say to try other models because i was pretty confused",[155,166,177,184],{"value":156,"source":97,"evidence":157},"Firefox support",[158,162],{"id":159,"by":160,"text":161},"44021289","donclark","Looks great. Any plans for this to work in Firefox?",{"id":163,"by":164,"text":165},"44021460","dbdoskey","Looks amazing. Would love something like this in Firefox or Zen. Mozilla released Orbit, but it was never something that ended up really being useful.",{"value":167,"source":97,"evidence":168},"Reduce DOM tokens sent to the LLM",[169,173],{"id":170,"by":171,"text":172},"44021468","dataviz1000","You might be able to reduce the amount of information sent to the LLM by 100 fold if you use a stacking context. Here is an example of one made available on Github (not mine).…",{"id":174,"by":175,"text":176},"44024048","kanzure","possibly something like https:\u002F\u002Fgithub.com\u002Fromansky\u002Fdom-to-semantic-markdown could also help for this use case.",{"value":178,"source":97,"evidence":179},"Saved and templated sessions",[180],{"id":181,"by":182,"text":183},"44021331","nico","Looks amazing, love it. And I see that in your roadmap the top thing is saving\u002Freplaying sessions Related to that, I'd suggest also adding the ability to \"templify\" sessions, ie.…",{"value":185,"source":97,"evidence":186},"Custom Ollama model configuration",[187],{"id":107,"by":108,"text":109},[189,195],{"value":190,"source":97,"evidence":191},"Does it send page content to the LLM?",[192],{"id":193,"by":123,"text":194},"44021531","> Since BrowserBee runs entirely within your browser (with the exception of the LLM), it can safely interact with logged-in websites, like your social media accounts or email,…",{"value":196,"source":97,"evidence":197},"How does it fill forms and interact with the page?",[198,202],{"id":199,"by":200,"text":201},"44026384","0xd1r","How does it do so? Just DOM manipulation, viewport scanning or something of the sort?",{"id":203,"by":200,"text":204},"44022151","Can it perform DOM manipilation as well, like fill forms or would the LLM response need to be structured for each specific site to use it on? And would an LLM be able to perform…",[206,213,217,221,228],{"value":207,"source":97,"evidence":208},"Browser Use",[209,212],{"id":210,"by":171,"text":211},"44023694","Here are some ideas on how to cache selectors for reuse and get all the text to use with full text search to find clickable elements slow but still faster than a round trip to a…",{"id":141,"by":142,"text":143},{"value":214,"source":97,"evidence":215},"Playwright MCP",[216],{"id":170,"by":171,"text":172},{"value":218,"source":53,"evidence":219},"Cline",[220],{"id":56},{"value":222,"source":97,"evidence":223},"uBlock Origin",[224],{"id":225,"by":226,"text":227},"44024544","reustle","uBlock Origin will do this for free",{"value":229,"source":97,"evidence":230},"Firefox AI sidebar",[231],{"id":232,"by":233,"text":234},"44021534","tux3","Firefox already has something similar natively, but it's not enabled by default. If you turn on the new sidebar they have an AI panel, which basically looks like an iframe to the…",{"comments":236,"answered":237,"key":238},16,6,[239,242,245],{"id":240,"text":241},"44021825","I will look into this. Speed and inefficiency due to the low information density of raw DOM tokens is the single biggest issue for this type of thing right now.",{"id":243,"text":244},"44024752","The link doesn't load for me. Can you try sharing again?",{"id":246,"text":247},"44024746","Looks powerful at least for read only use cases. Will have a look and compare token stats. Thanks",{"commenters":249,"max_depth":48,"maker_replies":236,"first_comment_mins":250,"lifespan_hours":251},36,42,95,[253,255,257,259,261,264,265,266,269,271,274,277,281,283,285,287,289,290,294,297,298,299,301,304,306,308,311,313,316,319,321,325,328,331,336,337,340,341,343,346,348,350,353,355,358,359,361,362,366,369,370,372,373,376,378,382,385,389,392,394,397,399,401],[170,33,41,254,171,33],"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fprivacy",[240,33,33,256,11,41],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fperformance",[210,33,43,258,171,33],"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fperformance",[243,33,33,260,11,41],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[262,33,33,263,171,33],"44025174","commenter\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[174,33,43,258,175,33],[246,33,33,256,11,41],[267,33,33,268,171,33],"44025192","other\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[181,41,48,270,182,33],"project\u002Fpositive\u002Fidea",[272,41,33,273,11,41],"44021734","maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fidea",[275,41,43,276,182,33],"44022294","project\u002Fneutral\u002Fidea",[278,45,48,279,280,33],"44021915","project\u002Fpositive\u002Fnone","stoicfungi",[282,45,33,263,11,41],"44022313",[284,45,33,263,280,33],"44022506",[193,43,43,286,123,33],"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fprivacy",[119,43,33,288,11,41],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fprivacy",[122,43,41,254,123,33],[291,43,33,292,293,33],"44022129","commenter\u002Fneutral\u002Fprivacy","joshstrange",[295,43,33,292,296,33],"44022134","blooalien",[163,38,48,279,164,33],[232,38,33,268,233,33],[300,38,33,268,164,33],"44021932",[302,38,33,268,303,33],"44023069","Vinnl",[84,38,33,305,11,41],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fexecution",[307,38,48,279,164,33],"44021926",[309,38,43,310,293,33],"44022103","project\u002Fneutral\u002Fexecution",[141,48,41,312,142,33],"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fexecution",[314,237,33,268,315,33],"44021913","krembo",[317,237,33,268,318,33],"44022227","nsonha",[320,237,33,288,11,41],"44022303",[322,237,33,323,324,33],"44060782","other\u002Fcritical\u002Fnone","blks",[326,237,33,268,327,33],"44024857","throwaway314155",[329,237,33,263,330,33],"44030300","neonwatty",[332,333,48,334,335,33],"44020884",7,"maker\u002Fpositive\u002Fnone","m0rde",[65,333,33,260,11,41],[338,31,33,268,339,33],"44038278","gurvinderd",[126,34,41,254,127,33],[342,34,41,254,330,33],"44034242",[107,344,48,345,108,33],10,"project\u002Fpositive\u002Fdesign",[347,344,33,260,11,41],"44022778",[100,349,48,345,101,33],11,[159,351,43,352,160,33],12,"project\u002Fneutral\u002Fnone",[354,351,33,305,11,41],"44021780",[356,351,43,310,357,33],"44021862","owebmaster",[203,18,43,310,200,33],[360,18,33,305,11,41],"44022763",[199,18,43,310,200,33],[363,364,43,276,365,33],"44021564",14,"rizs12",[367,364,33,268,368,33],"44021829","boredpudding",[148,32,41,312,149,33],[371,32,33,305,11,41],"44022325",[152,32,41,312,149,33],[374,236,43,310,375,33],"44021613","A4ET8a8uTh0_v2",[377,236,33,305,11,41],"44021749",[379,380,43,310,381,33],"44021284",17,"dmos62",[383,380,43,310,384,33],"44021521","fermuch",[386,387,43,276,388,33],"44022183",18,"hiccuphippo",[390,387,33,391,11,41],"44022308","project\u002Fpositive\u002Fexecution",[225,387,41,393,226,33],"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fidea",[133,395,41,396,134,33],19,"project\u002Fcritical\u002Fpricing",[68,395,33,398,11,41],"maker\u002Fneutral\u002Fpricing",[111,400,48,391,112,33],20,[402,403,43,286,404,33],"44024554",21,"flakiness",[],[407,412,417,421,425,429],{"id":408,"name":409,"points":410,"category":411},"44022353","Voynich NLP analysis",381,"learning_science",{"id":413,"name":414,"points":415,"category":416},"44042371","90s.dev",352,"dev_tools",{"id":418,"name":419,"points":420,"category":416},"44042490","Jwno",297,{"id":422,"name":423,"points":424,"category":20},"44009321","KVSplit",272,{"id":426,"name":427,"points":428,"category":416},"44006231","Erlang-RED",243,{"id":430,"name":431,"points":432,"category":416},"44023144","Vaev",233,false,"v2",{"id":436,"name":5,"line":6,"ai":433,"cat":20,"year":13,"points":14,"comments":15,"rec":28,"s":437,"top":18,"kw":438,"maker":11,"domain":10,"tier":19,"attempts":33,"strip":439,"url":9,"mix":440,"praise":96,"objection":116,"sub":21},44020626,0.03,[21,24,25,26,27],"1303053503105005310005013053333101333115",[31,32,33,34],1793991120471]