Let Claude or ChatGPT Use Your Browser

Writing code is still where AI saves us the most time. Claude and ChatGPT write it much faster than we can. Second on the list is browser use: giving Claude or ChatGPT permission to use your web browser.

What browser use is

You install an extension in Chrome and a side panel opens next to whatever you're looking at. You type what you want done, and the AI does it in your browser: it opens pages, clicks buttons, types into boxes, fills in forms and moves between tabs. You can watch it work, or go and do something else.

Both of the big names have one. Claude's is Claude in Chrome, on any paid Claude plan. ChatGPT's is ChatGPT for Chrome, and you need Plus or above for the mode that acts for you.

Why it's so useful

It works on any website

Most of the dull admin in a small business happens in websites that don't talk to anything else. Your accounts package, your insurer's portal, a supplier's ordering system, a booking site from 2011. Connecting AI to tools like these normally means an integration, and most of them don't have one.

Browser use doesn't need one. If you can do it in a browser, so can the AI, however old the website is.

It's already logged in

The extension works in your own browser, with the logins you already have. There's nothing to connect and no IT person to ask. If you're signed in to Xero, Amazon, Ocado, Royal Mail or your insurer, so is Claude.

You describe the result, not the clicks

You don't write instructions or learn any special wording. In the video, the request for a car insurance quote is one sentence: look at my existing policy, then get me a new quote on MoneySuperMarket. Claude worked out the rest, including which details from the policy went into which boxes on the comparison site.

You're not the one sitting there

It isn't fast. That insurance quote took Claude about ten minutes, and you could probably do it quicker yourself if you sat down and concentrated. But you don't have to. You start the job, get on with something that needs you, and come back to the results.

Jobs worth handing over

The video shows three examples: finding a figure in Xero, getting an insurance quote from an existing policy, and finding the best price for a pair of trainers. Other jobs that suit it:

Filling in a long form with details from a document or another site
Pulling numbers off a dashboard that has no export button
Checking your website for old prices, out-of-date pages and broken links
Comparing suppliers, venues or products open in several tabs
Clearing out newsletters and promotional email, sender by sender

If you'd normally do it with a second monitor, a spreadsheet open and a sigh, it's worth a try.

What it won't do

It won't spend your money. Both tools stop and hand over to you before anything is paid for or submitted, so the last click is always yours. They also hand back if a site asks for a CAPTCHA or a login they don't have.

And it takes a bit of patience. Long jobs use more of your plan's allowance than chatting does, and now and then it will take a wrong turn and need pointing back at the right page.

Try it

Setting up takes about ten minutes. We've written a step-by-step guide for each:

Pick one dull job you did in a browser this week and hand it over. If there's a job like that in your business every single week, we build tools that do it.