Manus, the virus AI “agent” platform for Chinese startup Butterfly Effects, had the unintended side effect of raising the profile of another AI tool called browser usage.
The use of browsers has been experiencing explosive growth over the past week, with the aim of making websites more accessible with agent applications that perform tasks on behalf of users. Co-creator Gregor Znick downloaded daily downloads from around 5,000 on March 3rd to 28,000 on March 10th from 28,000 to 28,000 on March 10th.
“The past few days have been really wild,” Znick said in DM. “We are the biggest trend repository (on GitHub) and have all the downloads (and) that actually translate to large numbers of uses.”
Why does it rise? Posts on how to use Manus Browser use over 2.4 million views and hundreds of re-chars on X. Using a browser is one of the components in which managers perform a variety of tasks, such as clicking on the site menu or filling out forms.
Zunic launched a company of the same name last year, behind the use of the browser used by Magnus Muller from ETH Zurich’s Student Project House Accelerator. The pair thought that web agents (agents that autonomously navigate websites and web apps) would become “big things” in 2025.
“What started out as casual brainstorming for a few lunches has turned into a challenge. Let’s make something small and throw it at the hacker news and see what happens,” Znick said. “We put together an MVP in four days, released it, and it’s boom – number one. From there, it was an absolute rocket.”
Using Brower extracts website elements (buttons, widgets, etc.) to make AI models more easily interacting. The tool can manage multiple browser tabs, configure actions such as saving files and performing database operations, and handle mouse and keyboard input.
The browser uses company fees for managed plans, but also offers free, self-hosted software. It’s the version that has exploded since the release of Manus.
Zunic says he and Magnus are trying to “sell shovels” to developers chasing the gold rush of web agents.
“We wanted to create a foundation layer where everyone builds a browser agent,” says Zunic. “In our opinion, there will be more agents on the web than humans by the end of the year.”
While that may sound overly bullish, some analysts predict that the broader market for AI agents will actually grow significantly in the coming months. Research and markets show that the sector will reach $42 billion in 2029. Deloitte expects that half of AI-based companies will deploy AI agents by 2027.
Aside from the Manus effect, the timing of using the browser seems to have been a coincidence.
Updated at 12:45pm Pacific: Previous versions of this story were mistakenly referred to as “browser user” as “browser user”. I regret the error.