Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that can automate any website

Some prior art:

"CoScripter" (2007) <https://blog.mozilla.org/labs/2007/09/coscripter/>

"IBM Automates Firefox With CoScripter" (2007) <https://www.informationweek.com/software/ibm-automates-firef...>

"Your personal assistant on the Web" (2010) <https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2010/10/your-personal-ass...>

"Koala: Capture, Share, Automate, Personalize Business Processes on the Web" (2007) <https://ofb.net/~tlau/research/papers/koala-chi07.pdf>

"CoScripter: Sharing ‘How-to’ Knowledge in the Enterprise" (2007) <https://ofb.net/~tlau/research/papers/leshed-group07.pdf>

"Here’s What I Did: Sharing and Reusing Web Activity with ActionShot" (2010) <https://ofb.net/~tlau/research/papers/p723-li.pdf>

Demo: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKIex_XAxWw>

Source code (bitrotted, of course): <https://github.com/jeffnichols-ibm/coscripter-extension>

aside from Browserflow are there really no similar contemporary projects/products? seems insane to me

There are many. A sample in alphabetical order - and by no means exhaustive:

https://apify.com/ (YC F1)

https://automatio.co/

https://axiom.ai/ (YC W21)

https://extension.dev/

https://www.progress.com/imacros

https://trysmartcuts.com (YC W21)

https://ui.vision/

https://wildfire.ai/

3 of these are YC companies. Reminds me of mixpanel vs segment vs amplitude, where YC are backing all the horses.

Each company is different in its particular approach and niche, though. This is inevitable with any large, or potentially large market.

Disclaimer: Co-founder of axiom.ai

Your website (axiom) needs to be better mobile-optimized. Elements be cut off by other elements. Irregular spacing, etc.

Doesn't look like a VC-backed app right now.

Compared to DK website, his looks way way more polished.

Just my two cents.

Yeah I'd ditch the cheesy animation and just work on getting the basics down.

I'm working on a site right now. Can you tell me what would be the basics?

UiPath does both browser and desktop automation. Browserflow looks very similar. https://www.uipath.com/

Not really. It reminds me a lot of iMacros, even the UI

https://www.progress.com/imacros

Find an existing theme or template that is popular and covers the main type of content you need. Then just change the content as needed. Don't build something from scratch just to be special

What does bitrotted mean in this context?

Agreed - we're running an experiment on Zapier integration and the callout mucked up the header. It's since been amended.

The homepage bears the scars of a lot of experiments. In pitches, I have had VCs complain about the website. I explain that we optimised for fast, messy iteration and learning. Then I explain what we've learned over X iterations. They've gone onto write cheques.

Still - it's messy and could do with a blank-slate refresh soon. We have new messaging to test.

Abandoned - last commit in 2013. That's typically so long ago that at least one Api, dependency or similar will be broken.

The historically first browser automation tool was iMacros (2001!).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMacros