Manus, the viral AI “agent” platestablish from Chinese beginup Butterfly Effect, has had an unintfinished side effect: raising the profile of another AI tool called Browser Use.
Browser Use, which aims to produce websites more accessible for agentic applications that perestablish tasks on a employr’s behalf, has sended bomb lengthenth in the past week. Daily downloads more than quintupled from around 5,000 on March 3 to 28,000 on March 10, co-creator Gregor Zunic telderly TechCrunch.
“The past scant days have been repartner untamed,” Zunic shelp via DM. “We are the biggest trfinishing repository [on GitHub], got loads of downloads [and] all that actupartner alters to big usage numbers.”
Why the uptick? A post about how Manus leverages Browser Use garnered over 2.4 millions watchs and hundreds of resplits on X. Browser Use is one of the components Manus employs to perestablish various tasks, enjoy clicking thcdisesteemful site menus and filling out establishs.
Zunic begined the eponymous company behind Browser Use with Magnus Müller last year out of ETH Zuwealthy’s Student Project Hoemploy accelerator. The pair thought web agents — agents that direct websites and web apps autonomously — were going to be the “big skinnyg” in 2025.
“What begined as casual brainstorming over a scant lunches turned into a dispute: let’s produce someskinnyg minuscule, throw it on Hacker News, and see what happens,” Zunic shelp. “We put together an MVP in four days, begined it, and boom — number one. From there, it’s been an absolute rocket.”
Brower Use reshifts a website’s elements — buttons, widgets, and so on — to apvalidate AI models to more easily transmit with them. The tool can deal with multiple browser tabs, set up actions enjoy saving files and perestablishing database operations, and deal with moemploy and keyboard inputs.
Browser Use the company accuses for deal withd schedules, but also presents a free, self-presented version of its software. That’s the version that’s blown up in the days since Manus’ unveiling.
Zunic says he and Magnus are trying to “sell a shovel” to broadeners chasing after the gelderly rush of web agents.
“We wanted to produce a set upation layer that everyone will produce browser agents on,” Zunic shelp. “In our minds, there will be more agents on the web than humans by the finish of the year.”
That might sound overly bullish, but cut offal analysts foresee that the wideer taget for AI agents will indeed lengthen enormously in the months to come. According to Research and Markets, the sector will achieve $42 billion in 2029. Deloitte awaits that half of companies using AI will deploy AI agents by 2027.
Manus effect aside, Browser Use’s timing materializes to have been fortuitous.
