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Hello, Auto Browser

Introducing a Chrome extension that puts an AI agent in your side panel — and why we built it the way we did.

Last updated April 20, 2026

The pattern is now familiar: you open a website, start a task, and find yourself doing the same mechanical five minutes you’ve done a hundred times. Clicks, types, scrolls, waits. None of it is creative. All of it is you.

We built Auto Browser to hand that part off.

The shape of the thing

Auto Browser is a Chrome extension. It lives in the side panel. You describe the task in plain English, and it drives the page on your behalf — reading the structure through the accessibility tree, acting through Chrome DevTools Protocol. No scripts to write. No integrations to stand up. Works on any site you already use.

It’s also four things the alternatives aren’t:

1. Model-agnostic

Most agent tools pick a model for you. We let you pick — and switch. Four backends, one dropdown:

  • Chrome Built-in AI (Gemini Nano) — on-device, private, offline-capable.
  • Google Gemini — direct API, frontier quality.
  • OpenRouter — every model in the catalog.
  • Local LLM (Ollama-style) — your machine, your rules.

You can swap mid-conversation. History carries over. A task got too hard for Nano? Flip to Claude on OpenRouter, finish it, flip back.

2. Private by default

No backend of ours. No telemetry. Your API keys stay on your machine. Secret fields in forms (passwords, tokens) are redacted before they can leave your browser. Pick on-device Gemini Nano and nothing leaves your machine, full stop.

3. WebMCP-native

One line in your page, and the agent prefers your tool over clicking around the DOM. WebMCP is the open spec for pages to expose themselves to agents, and Auto Browser implements it end-to-end.

That means the more web apps adopt WebMCP, the better every agent — not just ours — gets. We’re not building a walled garden. We’re building a citizen of one.

4. Safe, not careful-sounding

“Safe” has become a marketing word. Ours comes with receipts:

  • Banking, government, and healthcare sites are off-limits by default.
  • Running JavaScript always asks. No exceptions.
  • If a page redirects mid-action, prior approvals stop applying.
  • Passwords and tokens are redacted before they can leave your browser.
  • Every write action prompts. You are in the loop.

What’s next

  • Public Chrome Web Store listing.
  • An example gallery of WebMCP integrations — prove out the thesis that page-authored tools beat DOM crawling.
  • Field testing against WebVoyager to hold ourselves accountable.
  • More posts, here. Less hype, more field notes.

If you build web apps: tag your forms with toolname, see what happens. Otherwise, watch this space — the Chrome Web Store listing is the next beat.

Thanks for reading.