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…
In plain words
BrowserOS is an open-source, privacy-first AI agent alternative to Perplexity Comet. It runs locally in users' browsers rather than on external servers, keeping sensitive data like emails and browsing history on the user's machine. The tool supports local language models through Ollama and allows users to bring their own API keys, avoiding subscription fees. Available immediately on GitHub without an invite system, it is designed for users who want AI assistance while maintaining data privacy and control.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
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!
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