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 for Atlas, and lost tabs ranked first. 157 of the 214 lost tab posts described a real cost to the person. I was also tired of doing the same small online chores every day, so I built the browser I wanted. The SafeSpace prompt fits a direction the product already serves, because one listed direction is a browser companion that explains a suspicious message without overwhelming the user.

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. You can ask the side panel to break down a suspicious message, or to explain a setting before you touch it. Page content goes to your AI only when you ask for something or a routine runs, and a local model keeps a private reading on your machine. Atlas does not bypass logins, CAPTCHAs or limits a site sets.

How I built it

The browser is built on Chromium, and the agent checks in with you based on an approval setting you control. The infrastructure runs on Google Cloud with Postgres. Mac comes first and Windows comes after. Memory between sessions, saved routines and a password vault are being built next.

Challenges

The agent in the side panel is still being built, and the browser already works today. The hard part is making an agent people can trust. The answer in the design is that every routine checks in with the person first, and the site stays the boss of its own limits.

What I learned

People keep the browser that works for them. 142 of 249 posts about Arc and Dia came from users missing a browser that stalled or changed on them. Trust matters more than feature count.

Credits and pre-existing work

Atlas itself is a pre-existing component in this entry, built before the event window opened on October 17, and it is credited as that work here. The safety 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, credentials or live vulnerabilities are exposed anywhere in the entry.

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