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Not to get too bogged down in semantics, but in my mind, there’s a pretty big difference between an alpha and a prototype. A prototype just has to prove out your basic approach, and you don’t put it in the hands of end users, early adopter or not. An alpha is a lot more work, and while it’s expected to be buggy and missing some features, it should be substantially representative of the final product.

It already loads most websites pretty well (The JS engine is nearly complete!). Currently the big tasks are implementing the remaining web APIs and improving performance, stability, and security, so IMO 2026 is a good target for the first Alpha-test releases.

It's an entire new browser engine. It's a moving target fueled by billions of dollars, dominated by megacorporations, with thousands of edge cases to account for. I'm surprised it'll be ready for alpha that soon.

Is it though? Modern web browsers have gotten very complex and, to me at least, it doesn't seem that insane.

There already is a “prototype”. You can use GitHub and browse many sites.