Agentic Browsers Are a Feature, Not a Product
There's a lot of hype right now about "agentic browsers" - ChatGPT Atlas, Opera Neon, Perplexity Comet. The pitch is compelling ... browsers that don't just show you information, but take action on your behalf.
And look, I get the excitement. The idea that you could tell your browser "book me a flight and hotel for that conference" and have it actually do it? That's the sci-fi dream we've all been waiting for.
But here's the thing that's been nagging at me.
The browser isn't the product. It's just the hands.
The Real Question Nobody's Asking
Everyone's debating which agentic browser will "win" - like we're back in the Netscape vs. Explorer days. But that's the wrong frame entirely.
The question isn't "which browser agent is best at clicking buttons?"
It's: "What happens before, around, and after the clicking?"
Because a browser that can log into your bank account and move money around isn't impressive. It's terrifying. What makes it useful is everything else - the governance, the rules, the human checkpoints, the audit trail.
That's where the actual value lives.
What We're Actually Building
At one of our portfolio companies, Navion, we've been using browser agents in production for months. Not as a shiny demo. As core infrastructure for inventory management in supply chain logistics.
Here's what the workflow actually looks like:
- 🔹Browser agents log into customer portals - dozens of them, each with different authentication flows, layouts, and quirks
- 🔹They scrape inventory data - pulling numbers that used to require hours of manual copy-paste into Excel
- 🔹Data persists to a structured database - no more spreadsheet hell
- 🔹A rules engine evaluates the data - making recommendations based on patterns our design partners helped us codify
- 🔹Humans approve actual decisions - because no amount of automation should bypass accountability
That last part is critical. The rules engine makes recommendations that match what a human would decide about 98% of the time. But we don't let it execute those decisions autonomously.
Why? Because the 2% matters. And because trust isn't built by taking humans out of the loop - it's built by keeping them in the right places.
The Browser Is Plumbing
Agents that can do anything aren't useful. Agents that do the right thing, with proof, are.
The browser agent in our Navion workflow is genuinely impressive. It handles dynamic content, deals with CAPTCHAs, adapts when portals change their layouts. The engineering is non-trivial.
But it's still just plumbing.
The system is what matters:
- 🔹The workflow orchestration that sequences tasks correctly
- 🔹The rules engine that encodes domain expertise
- 🔹The human-in-the-loop checkpoints that maintain accountability
- 🔹The audit trail that proves what happened and why
Strip away any of those layers and you don't have a product. You have a liability.
Why "Agentic Browser" Companies Will Struggle
Here's my prediction... most standalone agentic browser companies will struggle to find durable business models.
Not because the technology doesn't work - it does, increasingly well. But because the browser layer commoditizes fast. The same way cloud infrastructure commoditized, the same way LLM APIs are commoditizing.
The value accrues to whoever owns the workflow - the end-to-end orchestration that turns "I can click buttons" into "I solved your actual problem."
That's what OutcomeOS™ is designed for. Not to replace browser agents, but to wrap them in the governance, sequencing, and proof layers that make them actually useful in production.
The Security Question Everyone's Ignoring
The reference article I read mentioned security concerns almost as an afterthought. But honestly, this should be the first conversation.
If you're giving a browser agent access to:
- 🔹Your email
- 🔹Your financial accounts
- 🔹Your customer data
- 🔹Your internal systems
...then you're not just automating tasks. You're creating a new attack surface with unprecedented access.
Every major breach in the last decade has involved some form of credential compromise. Now imagine credentials that can think - that can adapt their behavior, that can interact with systems in unpredictable ways.
The answer isn't to avoid browser agents. The answer is to architect systems where:
- 🔹Agents have minimal necessary permissions
- 🔹Every action is logged and auditable
- 🔹Critical decisions require human confirmation
- 🔹Anomalies trigger automatic stops
This is governance by design. And it's non-negotiable for any serious production use.
The Human-in-the-Loop Isn't a Bug
There's a tendency in AI discourse to treat human involvement as a limitation to be engineered away. "Full autonomy" as the goal. Humans as the bottleneck.
I think that's exactly backwards.
At Navion, the human-in-the-loop isn't slowing us down. It's what makes the system trustworthy. Our design partners know that when the system recommends an action, a human being has signed off on it. That's not inefficiency - that's the product.
The goal isn't to remove humans from the loop. It's to put them in the right part of the loop.
Browser agents are incredible at the mechanical parts - logging in, navigating, extracting data, filling forms. They're terrible at judgment, context, and accountability.
So we give them the mechanical work. And we keep the judgment where it belongs.
What This Means for Builders
If you're building with browser agents - or thinking about it - here's what I'd focus on:
1. Start with the workflow, not the agent Define what outcome you're trying to achieve. Map the full process. Then figure out which parts a browser agent can handle.
2. Design for human checkpoints Identify the decisions that matter. Build explicit approval gates. Make it easy for humans to review, approve, or override.
3. Instrument everything Every action should be logged. Every decision should have a receipt. When something goes wrong - and it will - you need to know exactly what happened.
4. Assume the browser layer will commoditize Don't build your moat on the automation itself. Build it on the workflow, the domain expertise, and the trust you establish with users.
5. Take security seriously from day one This isn't something you bolt on later. Minimal permissions, audit trails, anomaly detection - these are architectural decisions.
The Real Opportunity
Agentic browsers are going to get better. Fast. The computer vision will improve, the reliability will increase, the speed will pick up.
But that's table stakes.
The real opportunity is in building the systems around the agents - the orchestration that sequences work correctly, the governance that maintains accountability, the proof layers that build trust.
That's what we're building with OutcomeOS™. Not because browser agents aren't impressive - they are. But because impressive technology without structure is just expensive chaos.
The companies that win won't be the ones with the best browser agents.
They'll be the ones who figured out how to make agents trustworthy.
Related Reading
- 🔹Everything Is About to Change (and That's Why We Build)
- 🔹The Agentic SDLC: Turning AI from Tools into Teammates
- 🔹OutcomeOS: Our Agentic Operating System
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