Aside

Aside (“the most intelligent AI assistant, but it’s a browser”) is a Y-Combinator-backed AI browser rebuilt for humans and AI agents to do real work. Tier T3 (first-party product site; benchmark claims are self-reported). Its Browser Agent runs complex workflows across your logged-in sites without integrations — messages/replies, docs/spreadsheets, payments, internal tools, tasks like finding candidates or generating daily briefings.

Aside is the roster’s sharpest instance of the agentic pole done with local-privacy + guardrails baked in — the combination the synthesis flags as the resolution to the AI-vs-privacy and autonomy-vs-trust tensions:

• Local-first / privacy — all data stays on device, nothing shared with LLM providers; post-quantum encryption, Secure Enclave; a password manager whose credentials stay hidden from the AI. It also brings your own ChatGPT/Claude subscription or API key (model-agnostic).
• Human-in-the-loop — sensitive actions require approval, the explicit reversibility checkpoint the agentic pole needs (cf. Comet‘s Pause).
• Benchmarked — claims #1 on three browser-agent benchmarks, “surpassing OpenAI, Anthropic, and Browser Use” — a rare (if self-reported) attempt to measure agentic-browser quality, the evidence the field otherwise lacks. macOS.

Related

ai-browser · browser-wars-2026 · perplexity-comet · agent-guardrails