Sponsoring the Web Applets project, an open approach to AI-empowered web apps
Mozilla Builders has spent the past year accelerating 14 local AI projects and sponsoring projects like Llamafile and sqlite-vec that advance the state of the art in open source AI technology. Today, we’re proud to announce our next open source collaboration, the Web Applets project, an early-stage, open spec for building AI-native apps on top of the Web.
AI is going to have a profound impact on the Web, both in the ways we build it as developers and the ways we interact with it as users. This change is already underway, but many of the experiences and interfaces available today are still variations on text-based chatbots. This won’t last; the future of AI-powered interfaces will be much more diverse, creative, and capable. It’s like this is the DOS era and we’re just starting to think about the idea of GUIs.
Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity are already building applications that blur the lines between chatbots, web browsers, and search engines, reaching out to the web and then generating custom UIs based on user intent. These apps provide a hint of what’s to come, but they are overwhelmingly proprietary, closed-source offerings, tied to proprietary, closed language models. If we want to ensure the Web remains open and accessible to all in this new era of AI, there is a need for powerful and innovative open source solutions and open standards to emerge.
Today, the Web Applets project and its creator Rupert Manfredi (of the startup Unternet) join that growing list of collaborators.
Web Applets are small, secure pieces of web code (bundles of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) that can run anywhere, allowing a model to take actions within software much like a human would and then generate interfaces appropriate for the user’s intent. For example, a developer could write an applet that enables a model to respond to a query about local coffee shops by conducting internet searches and then displaying the results on an in-line map. And because the model can read the internal state of each applet, it can then conduct follow-up actions to complete a user’s request (for example, updating the map to display only coffee shops that will be open tomorrow afternoon). Anyone can build Web Applets and host them on the Web, and any client can potentially support them.
“Right now we're on the precipice of a platform shift that will define the next era of computing – a new form of software that's flexible and intelligent,” said Manifredi. “As builders, we face a choice: we can create another walled garden of proprietary systems, or we can embrace the principles that made the web revolutionary – openness, interoperability, and universal access. Mozilla's decades-long commitment to an open, healthy internet makes them an ideal partner in ensuring this new era of computing serves everyone, and I'm excited to build this future together.”
The Web Applets project is at a very early stage. By sponsoring this project and collaborating with Rupert, we aim to accelerate its progress, learning, and impact. We hope you’ll join in. There is already a repo where you can try it out for yourself, build your own applets, and contribute your ideas and feedback to the project. You can also connect with Rupert and the rest of the Mozilla Builders community on our Discord server.