I know there's a lot of tools out there but none of them really worked in the way that I wanted them to if I had to do this work everyday... so I set about building that tool and what I'm showing here today is a layer of that tool. It doesn't include any web scraping or automation related capabilities beyond a limited ability to run puppeteer scripts but what it is is a way to deliver a browser experience through a web app in a way that's customizable and programmable where you can change the user interface and everything like that.
The reason I chose this is because I just wanted to have one code base where I could build this web scraping product and deliver it on mobile devices on desktops on tablets and not have to worry about you know separate code bases for all those different things.... so it's sort of a platform for me to build more apps on top of.
And while I was building this I realized this layer was a pretty significant like amount of code which took me around 1 year to get to sort of an MVP and then another year to get to a more complete set of features. After putting in so much time I thought I should try to factor this layer out so that people can use it because it seems like this sort of thing is somehow useful. It's hard to pin down exactly what the niche use case is but people seem to want it for visibility into their automation in other words giving a head onto the headless browsers... As well as for delivering live training and customer support using co-browsing and just for straight up remote isolated browsing for security purposes. some people also use it for integrating third-party app processes right into their web app without their customers needing to go off site. Like a souped-up iframe or a browser view for the open web.
I never intended any of these things to be the point but I tried to roll with it as people were interested in using it in these ways.
to try to protect the work that I've done I have a public open source version with a limited feature set that nevertheless works as a remote browser that you can build on top of but I've licensed it under a fairly restrictive GPL 3 so that probably limits the use cases of people using that open source one.... and I have a proprietary you know secret version which has a better variable rate streaming of the viewport for better performance om a range of bandwidths and co-browsing built-in so multiple clients can connect and and use the browser at the same time as well as a bunch of control software for you know running multiple instances on a machine in a scalable and resource safe and secure manner.
I thoroughly enjoyed building this project because it was sort of the area that I could do a lot of damage you know working with the web and working with browsers as well as kind of touching the back end without going into areas that I didn't know so much about such as databases and things like that... but it was nonetheless a very very interesting project. I guess I'm talking in the past tense because the main phase of building that has passed and now my focus is trying to you know revamp my marketing website which I haven't done yet, change the prices that I have for the pro version and focus more on business applications. right now I basically negotiate each contract in an ad hoc manner, rather than having a standard process or prices. But I don't know how to say that on a marketing site because they all seem to have like three different plans or in a contact us for Enterprise so I don't know where I fit in on how to do that. I'll figure it out I suppose.
At some point when I recover my programming mojo after this epic marathon of 2 years of coding I want to get back to the web scraping idea. Along the way I tried to keep myself perked up with dreams and goals of startup up super success and so on and applied to YC around about 12 times with this idea and copped 12 anonymous rejections so that's been great. I think it was good though seriously because I discovered this whole subcommunity called bootstrapped indie founders who don't focus on trying to get VC money and thinking about it more that's probably more of the lifestyle that I actually want rather than chasing the giant hamster wheel, I suppose, as good as having all that cash would be, having something smaller and more manageable where I get to set the direction rather than running around at the beck and call of investors as I imagine you might have to do if you're funded...I think this different way works better for me.
But it's not like I would have chosen that at the start it's more like I didn't get the other thing so I'm making this thing work for me. Really well is my goal... right now I feel it's reasonably okay and I'm happy with it but it's also a struggle to sustain belief in the long term success of something when you're the only one driving that and when apart from people who use your product there's not really anyone around you to champion you on.
I find it makes me compensate by having an irrational amount of self belief.. I'm okay with that but it's just how it works for me to handle it, I suppose it comes with the territory. I'm sharing it here because other developers and engineers out there if they haven't seen this sort of thing before they might be interested in incorporating it into their own work and it's my hope that you're able to do that without having to worry about you know a license or paying to do so but I understand that could be difficult because of the restrictive license I've had...I wish there was some other way that I could make it more accessible for people to use without feeling like I'm compromising the business side of it.
It's sort of similar to the space that companies like browserless and diffbot and that some remote browser isolation companies are into but it's also a little bit different and to be honest I'm not really super clear on all the intricacies of the market and how will that works but my feeling is that it makes sense for me to have some sort of paid for license or for managed versions you know pay per seat or per use per month model.... anyway I'm just taking it one step at a time I'm doing okay for now and my focus I suppose is on building things on top of it as well as helping people to use it and making me
more money with that. So I really appreciate all the support that this community has given me directly or indirectly you know over the years where I've been kind of developing this and the useful feedback and the insightful discussions where I got ideas for ways that I could use it or things people wanted. I tried to follow the launch hn guidelines by dang here and.... and I'm not sure how well that's going to succeed. I'm not trying to do a big launch here or anything... like I said I haven't even revamped the marketing site yet I'd just be happy to get you know 30 or even less and you know maybe some insight comments... I think I'm posting it today because it's just part of that process where I'm working toward doing a revamp of the marketing site which I intend to post on producthunt you know when that's ready.