Aside, a San Francisco startup in Y Combinator’s Fall 2025 batch, expanded its agentic browser in October 2026 with Computer Use and Context Awareness. The additions extend the agent beyond browser tabs to installed applications and on-screen context, supporting the company’s plan to position the product as a “personal work assistant” rather than an “AI browser” by the end of 2026.

Founders Jun Kim, Chanhee Lee and Sanghoon Lee previously worked as early engineers at marketing analytics service Airbridge, whose annual revenue reached $30 million, according to Y Combinator. The team entered Y Combinator on its seventh attempt after cycling through five earlier products.

Kim proposed the browser in December 2025 after the team’s previous product encountered integration bottlenecks involving services including Notion, GitHub and spreadsheets. The company closed that product in January 2026 and publicly launched Aside on June 23. A launch post received more than 1.7 million views on X. Aside later raised an undisclosed funding round and released an official Windows version on Sept. 14.

Browser and computer controls

Aside is based on Chromium and supports Chrome extensions, vertical tabs, profiles and split-screen use. It can import history, cookies and bookmarks from browsers including Chrome, Edge, Arc, Comet and Safari.

Users describe an intended result, after which the browser agent opens websites, clicks, completes forms and gathers information. Agent activity appears in a separate group of tabs that users can take back for manual control.

Tasks have three permission levels, according to Aside’s security documentation. Read only permits access to pages and files without changes; Guard allows activity in approved folders and requests permission elsewhere; and Full access permits reading and writing files anywhere on the computer. Guard is the default.

The Aside Vault password manager fills credentials without exposing them to the model. Browser history and task memory are stored locally as editable markdown files, with retention options of 30 days, 90 days or indefinitely.

As of Oct. 23, Computer Use allowed the agent to control applications installed on a Mac or Windows PC, according to Aside’s changelog. The feature is available on the $200-a-month Max plan.

Context Awareness indexes the screen, tabs and drafts so users do not have to repeat that information in prompts. Lee said the system can remember unsent replies. The data remains on the device. The feature was available to all accounts as of Oct. 21 but was disabled by default, while screen capture required the Max plan.

Models and automation

Aside supports three types of model connections, according to its documentation: models bundled with an Aside plan; external subscriptions including ChatGPT, Claude and GitHub Copilot; and API keys for Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Google, xAI, Vercel AI Gateway and Cloudflare AI Gateway. It also supports local models through Ollama and LM Studio.

Using an external subscription does not consume Aside credits, with requests counting against the model provider’s subscription limits. Aside added GPT-6 Sol and Luna, GPT-6.1 Sol, Gemini 4 Argon, Claude Haiku 5.5 and Grok 4.7 during September and October 2026. Its built-in Claude model has used Claude Opus 5.5 since Sept. 23.

Routines can start new tasks on a schedule or resume an existing chat. In Incrypted’s test, Aside created a daily X briefing that collected five trending topics and compared follower, like and reply counts with the prior report. Because routine runs cannot access chat history, the agent stored daily metrics in a separate local memory file.

Aside also offers remote task control through Slack, Telegram and Discord from the Pro plan, while its Ultrabrowse research mode can compare vendors, prices and requirements across multiple websites. Developers can use the Aside command-line interface to launch browser tasks or connect the browser to external agents as an MCP server.

Limits and roadmap

Agents and routines currently run on the user’s computer. The documentation does not state what happens when a scheduled routine is due while the machine is turned off. Aside Cloud, intended to run complex routines while a laptop is closed, remains under development.

Context Awareness may index work chats, online banking pages and other personal data visible on screen, although Aside says the information is stored locally. Product analytics are enabled by default but can be disabled in the browser’s security and privacy settings.

The company said the second version would add Aside Cloud, a mobile application organized by topic, shared company memory and developer tools for teams. It also plans a performance update intended to reduce memory use and CPU load to about one-third of current levels.

“I don’t think chat is the final form of interacting with an agent,” Lee wrote.

Source: Incrypted