Show HN: CopyCat (YC W25) – Free Alternative to OpenAI's $200 Operator | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: CopyCat (YC W25) – Free Alternative to OpenAI's $200 Operator

runcopycat.com

34 pointsgsabin19 comments

CopyCat looks great, we're building a similar alternative at Meha (also free and no sign up). https://meha.ai -> just download and start generating bots. Meha works similarly to CopyCat/Operator and controls your Chrome locally (+ is also free). How are you guys dealing with the operator launch in terms of product/strategy?

which model do you use locally?

Can you please share more about Meha? Which models are you using? Is this just a wrapper of browser-use.com and Playwright?

What is your monetization strategy?

Has anyone used this? The site doesn’t provide any screenshots, or much of anything.

Edit: Whoops, I didn’t notice I was only on the download page.

The link is not to the homepage. It goes to the download page. I see from other posts that this has led to some confusion.

Here's the link to the homepage: https://www.runcopycat.com/

I’m not intending to make a typical HN-type snipe, but I’m wondering why (it seems) so many new tools/programs are being released for Mac only at the moment, especially in the ~AI space?

For example, is it:

- there are specific reasons why developing AI-related tools for Mac is just easier/faster?

- a rational business decision based on the demographics of likely users?

- a reflection of most development taking place amongst people who are predominantly Mac users?

- something else?

Cheap large GPU memory on Mac. Nvidia is an order of magnitude more expensive

Looks pretty cool! How are you guys trying to differentiate from other all-purpose browser agents right now?

Works well at my tricky pizza order test which claude computer use failed..

How is it free?

I guess it doesn't require VM's on cloud instead does similar work on the PC it self, by creating a sandbox henceforth much cheaper and secure alternative to Operator

Temporarily free, we'll probably do a freemium model.

u should make a better landing page

Co-Founder at CopyCat - got it. Appreciate the feedback

What is the actual technology being used here? Which LLM/VLM? Playwright? What do you store? What do you not?

Tell me actual details.

ok, it appears to be a wrapper of browser-use.com and playwright? What else, I'm not sure.

Why is there a required account login in the software?

I'm so sick of this crap where I want to see if something is worth a damn and I'm forced to sign up for something. This is not FREE.

also once you sign up for an account, it won't launch if blocked in little snitch. I'm not going to be the product.

Co-Founder of CopyCat here - its free right now because we have no idea what people are going to use for this. Its so general purpose, so the login is to understand what people are prompting. We do not know anything that's happening on the browser, only what is happening in copycat. Helps us find bugs and release faster and possibly reach out to our users as well!

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