A startup known as Pig.dev that participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch was engaged on a possible revolutionary thought: AI agentic tech to manage a Microsoft Home windows desktop.
However in Could, the founder announced he was abandoning the tech and pivoting his firm to one thing completely completely different: Muscle Mem, a cache system for AI brokers that permits them to dump repeatable duties.
An early-stage YC firm pivoting is nothing out of the peculiar, after all. What’s attention-grabbing — and what sparked a dynamic dialog on Thursday’s Y Combinator podcast — is that Pig was engaged on laptop use, one of many huge areas that must be solved for brokers to be really helpful within the workforce. One other firm – and one other YC alum – that’s tackling that for the browser is known as Browser Use.
Browser Use surged to recognition when Chinese language agentic software Manus, which relied on it, went viral. Browser Use primarily scans the buttons and parts of a web site to show them right into a extra digestible, “text-like” format for brokers, serving to the AI perceive learn how to navigate and use the web site.
Through the Y Combinator podcast, launched Thursday, accomplice Tom Blomfield likened Pig because the Browser Use for Home windows desktops. The podcast featured Amjad Massad, the founder and CEO of fashionable vibe-coding startup Replit.
Massad, Blomfield, and YC accomplice David Lieb have been discussing how long-term laptop use of hours, somewhat than minutes, was nonetheless a stumbling block for brokers. Because the context window for reasoning grows, an agent’s accuracy wavers whereas LLM prices enhance.
“The recommendation I’d give founders in the present day is taking both Browser Use or Home windows automation with Pig and making an attempt to use that into enterprise, right into a vertical trade,” Blomfield prompt.
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Massad agreed, “The second that expertise works, these two corporations are going to do actually, very well,” he stated.
However alas, Pig’s founder Erik Dunteman has already given up on the thought. In his put up in Could he defined that he at first needed to run a cloud API product (a standard means of delivering AI tech). However his prospects didn’t need that. So he tried promoting it as a dev software. They usually didn’t need that both.
“What customers within the legacy app automation house truly need is handy me cash, and obtain an automation,” he stated. Primarily, they needed to rent a advisor to make their desired Home windows robotic course of automations work for them.
However Dunteman didn’t need to do one-off initiatives. He needed to construct improvement instruments. So he deserted Pig and began engaged on an AI caching software. Dunteman declined additional remark about his choice to ditch Home windows automation, though the Pig.dev website and Github documents stay accessible.
Nonetheless, Dunteman did inform us his new software was impressed by the pc use drawback. It’s chipping away at it from one other angle. The thought is to permit the agent to dump repeated duties to the Muscle Mem service, so the agent can give attention to reasoning for brand new issues and edge circumstances.
“What we’re engaged on now could be straight impressed by and relevant to laptop use, simply on the developer tooling layer. I stay very optimistic for laptop use as ‘the final mile’,” he instructed TechCrunch.
That’s to not say that nobody is engaged on Home windows automation.
Most likely the corporate farthest alongside on that’s Microsoft itself. As an example, in April Microsoft announced it added laptop use tech to Copilot Studio for graphical person interfaces like Home windows. That tech was launched as a analysis preview. Plus, earlier this month, Microsoft introduced an agentic tool in Windows 11 that helps finish customers handle settings.