Atlas

An everyday browser you design yourself, with your own AI in the side panel that runs on the account you already pay for.

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Inspiration

I read 8,175 posts about browsers across 16 platforms, and lost tabs ranked first. 157 of the 214 lost tab posts described a real cost to the person. I also got tired of doing the same small online chores every day. So I built the browser I wanted.

What it does

Atlas is an everyday browser built on Chromium, and I am building it so you can design it yourself with your own AI in the side panel. The AI is the Hermes agent, which is open source from Nous Research. It runs on the ChatGPT, Claude or Grok account you already pay for, on an API key, or on a local model. The provider bills the user, and Atlas never resells model usage. The browser works today. The agent side is being built to remember you and run the routines you save. Every routine checks in with you first.

What first launch looks like

Atlas is pre-launch, so this is a first-launch entry. Launching means finishing the side panel agent and shipping the Mac release. Pro costs 19.99 a month after the free browser brings people in. Prize money would go straight into the Apple developer and distribution costs. Placing here also gives a solo student founder credibility with the accelerator screens ahead.

How I built it

The browser is built on Chromium, and the infrastructure runs on Google Cloud with Postgres. Mac comes first and Windows comes after. My main tools are Claude Code and Codex.

Challenges

The hard part is trust, not features. Every routine answers to an approval setting the user controls. Page content goes to the connected AI only when the user asks. Atlas does not bypass logins, CAPTCHAs or limits a site sets.

What I learned

142 of 249 posts about Arc and Dia came from users missing a browser that stalled or changed on them. People stay with tools they can rely on and shape. So building for designability beats building demos.

Credits and pre-existing work

Atlas itself is a pre-existing component in this entry, built before the event window opened on October 16, and it is credited as that work here. The launch framing and the text of this entry were written during the window. Hermes is used under its open source terms with attribution. No private data or credentials are exposed anywhere in the entry.

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