Octoweb

Octoweb is a free, open-source web browser for macOS built around the keyboard and an AI sidebar. It's written in Rust on top of WebKit rather than Electron or Chromium, so it uses the system rendering engine, and its interface starts from a command palette instead of a row of tabs. The AI side runs through a local agent runtime, and the browser exposes an MCP server so external agents can drive it. It's licensed under Apache 2.0 and installs with a single Homebrew command.

The idea is that a browser for people who think in shortcuts shouldn't make them reach for the mouse. Cmd Shift P opens the command palette for navigation, search, fuzzy matching over open tabs and history, and tab management. Cmd 1 through Cmd 9 jump to numbered slots holding pinned pages. There's a save-for-later reading queue, find in page, screenshots, built-in PDF and DOCX viewers, and tab hibernation when memory gets tight. Workspaces are isolated with their own data stores, cookies and sessions, so a work identity and a personal one never bleed into each other.

A session starts in the palette. Type a few characters to jump to an open tab, a history entry or a search, hit Enter, and the page fills the window. Pin the handful of pages you live in to the numbered slots and they're one chord away. When something needs reading later, queue it instead of leaving a tab open. The whole model assumes the hands stay on the keys, which is also why the browser was built from scratch rather than skinned over an existing one.

Workspaces matter more than they sound. Each one has its own storage, cookies and sessions, so keeping two accounts on the same service apart is a matter of switching workspace rather than opening a private window. Tab hibernation frees memory from pages you haven't touched in a while, and the built-in PDF and DOCX viewers mean documents open in place instead of landing in a download folder.

The AI sidebar opens with Cmd Shift A and is powered by octomind, a plug-in agent runtime that talks to the browser over ACP, an open agent protocol. Agents can render interactive interfaces in the sidebar through A2UI, so an agent can show a form or a set of choices rather than a wall of text, and Cmd Shift E applies an AI transformation to the text you're editing inline, in any text field. A proactive learning mode that analyzes browsing patterns is available but off by default, and it runs locally. Content blocking uses WebKit's own content rule lists, so ad and tracker filtering happens in the engine rather than in an extension.

The MCP server is the piece that will interest people building agents. It listens on localhost port 3434 and exposes roughly thirty browser control tools, so a coding assistant or any other MCP client can open pages, read them and act on them in a real WebKit browser with the user's sessions, without stealing focus from whatever the person is doing. That turns Octoweb into a browser automation target that doesn't need a separate headless install.

The browser needs no account, and the agent runtime it talks to is local, so which model sits behind the sidebar is a matter of how octomind is configured rather than something the browser decides. That keeps Octoweb a thin, inspectable layer between the page and whatever assistant you've chosen, and it's the reason the whole thing can be read end to end on GitHub.

It's for developers and power users on macOS 13 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel, who are comfortable living in a command palette and want their browser to participate in agent workflows rather than sit outside them. It's less suited to people who rely on the Chrome extension ecosystem, since it's WebKit-based, or to anyone who wants a familiar tab bar and mouse-driven interface.

What makes it different is the combination. Keyboard-first browsers exist, AI sidebars exist, and browser automation servers exist, but here all three are one native app with a small footprint, no account, and a codebase you can read. The project is honest about being experimental. It's at version 0.14.0 with a release on 5 September 2026, a small GitHub following, and the fast release cadence of an early project, so features move and occasionally break.

Access is free and open source. There's no paid tier and no account. Install it with brew install --cask muvon/tap/octoweb, download a build from GitHub Releases, or compile from source, and support the project through GitHub Sponsors if you want to. It's developed by Muvon Un Limited, and the repository at github.com/muvon/octoweb is the place for issues, since no contact address is published on the site.