This makes a ton of sense to me with the huge corpus of web standards that exist. In theory we should be able to generate a browser from those specs, it just took a massive amount of effort before. Maybe if things like this get some traction, some of the human time spent implementing the spec could be spent on creating more/better specs, allowing for even better generation too.
Edit: replies are making good points about AI capabilities and where the effort really goes. Let’s just say that I meant this in an aspirational sense, rather than where the rubber actually meets the road today.
As someone who has spent the last 3 years implementing a browser engine from scratch full time (that currently passes ~half the 200k "css" tests that test style/layout/rendering), I find that (without a lot of close hand holding) the AIs are very far from being able to do this. They'll give you something that passes the tests, but it will do it a ridiculous way be far too slow to be useful (and is wrong architecturally such that it's not going to converge on a better solution).
I guess my hope is that while this may be the case now, perhaps it won’t be eventually. If you can generate from a spec, different implementations may be slower or worse in a variety of ways but still meet the spec.
At that point it’s about optimizing and deciding trade offs, both of which might mean heavily directing the generation in some way. Over time, maybe LLMs or whatever succeeds them won’t go down so many bad architectural paths. We’ve certainly seen that already in the last year or two.
I also don’t think folks like you ever lose your value in these efforts, even if all of it came true tomorrow. At worst it would be you plus the AI, which would always be a more potent combination than say, me with an AI trying to make a browser engine.
> I, too, hope that one of the two or three companies will be able to improve and displace everything. Who needs Linux anyway.
In the context of browsers the domination of one or two companies is already complete, and being able to generate new browsers with AI would hopefully allow people to escape the stranglehold of Chrome/Blink.
That said, I doubt a new,competitive browser could be created that way. The (possibly AI) developers of web apps won’t want to test on somebody’s bespoke AI-generated browser.
What does this have to do with Linux? I want more control for individuals, not less.
Do you really think LLMs will only belong to 2 or three companies in the future, when we already have fairly competitive open weights usable from home (or rented servers)? How would this be anything but the opposite of centralization amongst 2 or 3 companies, which is already the case now?
Software has always been displacing things, especially itself.
Not sure why you are being downvoted, but this is definitely a limitation of current models and difficult to optimize for. Anything you are not specifically optimizing for is essentially unconstrained: the model could learn it by pure chance, but the likelihood is exceedingly low.
Techniques, like the newly announced RL-XAR from Meta [1] are being developed that will likely improve reward models and guide RL training to optimize for metrics like software architecture that are hard to verify otherwise.
I recognize the feeling of handholding and have the tingles telling me that given the step change of Opus 5.5 and what passed by in the news lately, agent swarms are about to become mainstream. That's exactly what a project like this would use. I think everybody will be able to create their own engine and out of the ones who try, a few will actually make gains beyond what's available in parts of the engine.
It's a matter of "bring the best non-conflicting wins together" at that point. The existing engines are too big to flip over their codebase without having seen competitors prove it too.
My estimate is that with the release of Opus 5.7, companies need to have their shit together because the work ecosystem will flip over at 6 at the current rate of progress. This generation is the first one that delivers local applications with a better toolset than a small scale SaaS in hours to days.
I've tried most of them. Certainly all the Open AI and Anthropic models. Fable is still the best I've tried. But it still struggles with architectural issues.
Alacart · · focus · HN ↗
Edit: replies are making good points about AI capabilities and where the effort really goes. Let’s just say that I meant this in an aspirational sense, rather than where the rubber actually meets the road today.
nicoburns · · focus · HN ↗
Alacart · · focus · HN ↗
At that point it’s about optimizing and deciding trade offs, both of which might mean heavily directing the generation in some way. Over time, maybe LLMs or whatever succeeds them won’t go down so many bad architectural paths. We’ve certainly seen that already in the last year or two.
I also don’t think folks like you ever lose your value in these efforts, even if all of it came true tomorrow. At worst it would be you plus the AI, which would always be a more potent combination than say, me with an AI trying to make a browser engine.
bergheim · · focus · HN ↗
I hear you brother. I, too, hope that one of the two or three companies will be able to improve and displace everything. Who needs Linux anyway.
Hope you are on the right side of the fence.
scared_together · · focus · HN ↗
In the context of browsers the domination of one or two companies is already complete, and being able to generate new browsers with AI would hopefully allow people to escape the stranglehold of Chrome/Blink.
That said, I doubt a new,competitive browser could be created that way. The (possibly AI) developers of web apps won’t want to test on somebody’s bespoke AI-generated browser.
Alacart · · focus · HN ↗
Do you really think LLMs will only belong to 2 or three companies in the future, when we already have fairly competitive open weights usable from home (or rented servers)? How would this be anything but the opposite of centralization amongst 2 or 3 companies, which is already the case now? Software has always been displacing things, especially itself.
scared_together · · focus · HN ↗
Alacart · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
testerius · · focus · HN ↗
warkdarrior · · focus · HN ↗
Speed is probably not part of a web spec.
> wrong architecturally
Nor is software architecture (though web security specs may have some influence here).
freecodeio · · focus · HN ↗
"being a grandmother is not part of the bike frame spec so my grandmother with wheels is a bike"
nonethewiser · · focus · HN ↗
10000truths · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=2G9ZGIOiPjY" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=2G9ZGIOiPjY
nsagent · · focus · HN ↗
Techniques, like the newly announced RL-XAR from Meta [1] are being developed that will likely improve reward models and guide RL training to optimize for metrics like software architecture that are hard to verify otherwise.
[1]: <a href="https://facebookresearch.github.io/RAM/blogs/unslop/" rel="nofollow">https://facebookresearch.github.io/RAM/blogs/unslop/
toonvanvr · · focus · HN ↗
It's a matter of "bring the best non-conflicting wins together" at that point. The existing engines are too big to flip over their codebase without having seen competitors prove it too.
My estimate is that with the release of Opus 5.7, companies need to have their shit together because the work ecosystem will flip over at 6 at the current rate of progress. This generation is the first one that delivers local applications with a better toolset than a small scale SaaS in hours to days.
testerius · · focus · HN ↗
nicoburns · · focus · HN ↗
LastBrowser · · focus · HN ↗
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