WebBrain tackles the everyday frustrations of people who need to pull information from websites, fill repetitive forms, or automate multi‑step browser tasks without sacrificing privacy or blowing their budget. If you spend time copying product lists, scraping prices, or summarizing articles, you know how tedious manual work can be and how risky it feels to grant a browser extension full access to your data. Many AI plugins either lock you into a costly subscription, send your page content to unknown servers, or only work in a read‑only mode that leaves you stuck when you actually need to click, type, or navigate.
WebBrain solves these problems by keeping everything local when you choose. You run a model like llama.cpp or Ollama on your own machine, so no page data ever leaves your computer. When you need more power, you can connect a cloud API, but the decision is yours. The extension lives in the side panel of Chrome or Firefox, giving each tab its own conversation history and respecting your logged‑in state without adding telemetry or external accounts.
Two clear modes protect you from accidental changes. Ask mode is read‑only and perfect for extracting data, summarizing text, or answering questions about a page. Act mode steps in when you need to interact—clicking buttons, filling forms, scrolling, or navigating across tabs—using the Chrome DevTools Protocol to send trusted input events that modern sites honor. Firefox’s Act mode is limited because it lacks CDP, but the core reading features remain fully functional.
Security is built in: the agent starts in Ask mode, asks before any consequential action, and you can disable those prompts only if you truly want to. For mutations like submitting a form or making a purchase, WebBrain insists on using the visible UI rather than calling hidden APIs, reducing the risk of prompt injection attacks. Token usage stays low because screenshots are resized and JPEG‑compressed, conversation history is trimmed, and you can pair a cheap text planner with a separate vision model.
Whether you’re a researcher gathering sources, a marketer monitoring competitor prices, or a professional automating routine sign‑ups, WebBrain gives you a free, open‑source, self‑hosted way to get the job done—no subscription fees, no data leaving your machine, and full control over when the agent acts.
#AI #Productivity #Automation #Privacy #OpenSource #BrowserExtension