We packaged an MCP server inside Chromium
Hey HN, we just shipped a browser with an inbuilt MCP server! We're a YC startup (S24) building BrowserOS — an open‑source Chromium fork. We're a privacy‑first alternative to the new wave of AI browsers like Dia, Perplexity Comet. Since launching ~3 months ago, the #1 request has been to expose our browser as an MCP server. -- Google beat us to launch with chrome-devtools-mcp (solid product btw), which lets you build/debug web apps by connecting Chrome to coding assistants. But we wanted to take this a step further: we packaged the MCP server directly into our browser binary. That gives…
In plain words
BrowserOS is an open-source Chromium fork that includes a built-in MCP server, enabling AI coding assistants to interact with web applications directly through the browser. Designed as a privacy-focused alternative to AI browsers, it allows developers to build and debug web apps by connecting their browser to coding assistants without additional setup or configuration. The integrated MCP server works with users' existing logged-in sessions, simplifying the workflow for developers who want to combine browser functionality with AI-assisted development tools.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN, we just shipped a browser with an inbuilt MCP server! We're a YC startup (S24) building BrowserOS — an open‑source Chromium fork. We're a privacy‑first alternative to the new wave of AI browsers like Dia, Perplexity Comet. Since launching ~3 months ago, the #1 request has been to expose our browser as an MCP server. -- Google beat us to launch with chrome-devtools-mcp (solid product btw), which lets you build/debug web apps by connecting Chrome to coding assistants. But we wanted to take this a step further: we packaged the MCP server directly into our browser binary. That gives three advantages: 1. MCP server setup is super simple — no npx install, no starting Chrome with CDP flags, you just download the BrowserOS binary. 2. with our browser's inbuilt MCP server, AI agents can interact using your logged‑in sessions (unlike chrome-devtools-mcp which starts a fresh headless instance each time) 3. our MCP server also exposes new APIs from Chromium's C++ core to click, type, and draw bounding boxes on a webpage. Our APIs are also not CDP-based (Chrome Debug Protocol) and have robust anti-bot detection. -- Few example use cases for BrowserOS-mcp are: a) *Frontend development with Claude Code*: instead of screenshot‑pasting, claude-code gets WYSIWYG access. It can write code, take a screenshot, check console logs, and fix issues in one agentic sweep. Since it has your sessions, it can do QA stuff like "test the auth flow with my Google Sign‑In." Here's a video of claude-code using browserOS to improve the css styling with back-and-forth checking: https://youtu.be/vcSxzIIkg_0 b) *Use as an agentic browser:* You can install BrowserOS-mcp in claude-code or Claude Desktop and do things like form-filling, extraction, multi-step agentic tasks, etc. It honestly works better than Perplexity Comet! Here's a video of claude-code opening top 5 hacker news posts and summarizing: https://youtu.be/rPFx_Btajj0 -- *How we packaged MCP server inside Chromium binary*: We package the server as a Bun binary and expose MCP tools over HTTP instead of stdio (to support multiple sessions). And we have a BrowserOS controller installed as an extension at the application layer which the MCP server connects to over WebSocket to control the browser. Here's a rough architecture diagram: https://dub.sh/browseros-mcp-diag -- *How to install and use it:* We put together a short guide here: https://git.new/browseros-mcp Our vision is to reimagine the browser as an operating system for AI agents, and packaging an MCP server directly into it is a big unlock for that! I'll be hanging around all day, would love to get your feedback and answer any questions!
More ai this month
the category →
I trained a 125M-parameter transformer to autocomplete piano performances in real time (~108 notes/sec on an iPhone 15). The idea is basically GitHub Copilot or Tabnine, except instead of prompting it with code, you prompt it by playing a few notes on a MIDI piano. The model then continues what you played, entirely on-device. The app is free if anyone wants to try it. Happy to answer questions about the model, training, Core ML, or the many things that didn't work.
AI · 17d ago · simedw.com
Astute▲585Automate your B2B brand going viral, with new media creators
AI · 18d ago · company-app.joinastute.com


Hey HN, Henry from Cactus here! We previously released Cactus Needle, a 14MB agentic LLM for tool call, device use, and structured extraction for phones, wearables, smart homes, small robots and microcontrollers. We got really great feedback here, and have now incorporated the suggestions to release Needle 2. The whole model is a single 14MB binary that runs a full session in 28MB of RAM; 45m parameters at 2bit compression. Needle hits 500 tokens/sec decode speed on a Raspberry Pi 5, sits between 400-1,500 tokens/sec on VR devices like Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro, and ranges…
AI · 27d ago · cactuscompute.com


Launched alongside, October 2025
the whole month →

- SA
I went down the rabbit hole on a side project and ended up building this: Strange Attractors(https://blog.shashanktomar.com/posts/strange-attractors). It’s built with three.js. Working on it reminded me of the little "maths for fun" exercises I used to do while learning programming in early days. Just trying things out, getting fascinated and geeky, and being surprised by the results. I spent way too much time on this, but it was extreme fun. My favorite part: someone pointed me to the Simone Attractor on Threads. It is a 2D attractor and I asked GPT to extrapolate it to…
AI · Oct 2025 · blog.shashanktomar.com

- ASAutism Simulator▲779
Hey all, I built this. It’s not trying to capture every autistic experience (that’d be impossible). It’s based on my own lived experience as well as that of friends on the spectrum. I'm trying to give people a feel for what masking, decision fatigue, and burnout can look like day-to-day. That’s hard to explain in words, but easier to show through choices and stats. I'm not trying to "define autism". I’ve gotten good feedback here about resilience, meds, and difficulty tuning. I’ll keep tweaking it. If even a few people walk away thinking, "ah, maybe that’s why my coworker struggles in those…
Life & fun · Oct 2025 · autism-simulator.vercel.app
