Ask HN: What Arc/Dia features should we prioritize?
14 comments
·September 4, 2025barbazoo
From their readme
> You probably have 70+ tabs open right now. You're constantly fighting your browser instead of it helping you. Simple tasks like "order Tide Pods from my Amazon order history" should just work with AI agents.
What does automation have to do with the number of tabs? Also _should_ it _just_ work? Do we really need to automate consumption behavior now?
> We believe AI agents should automate your work locally and securely, not send your data to some search or ad company.
Ordering tide pods locally? It won’t change how much ad companies learn about you. It’s just someone else clicking for you.
What am I missing here, has anyone asked for this? Is anyone actually finding these AI browsers useful? Personally I want Arc, not Dia.
felarof
> What does automation have to do with the number of tabs? Also _should_ it _just_ work? Do we really need to automate consumption behavior now?
Our agent can also help with tab closing, grouping, etc. We want the entire browser experience to be improved by AI.
We will have semantic search over browser history, bookmarks as well soon.
> What am I missing here, has anyone asked for this? Is anyone actually finding these AI browsers useful? Personally I want Arc, not Dia.
I understand where you are coming from. The use cases that agent can independently handle are quite trivial right now. But we strongly believe as LLMs improve you will be able to have agents automate larger tasks. You might be able to show the agent some task you do and it learns to do that without your supervision.
What do you mean by you want Arc? What features? -- vertical tabs, spaces, shortcuts? We would love to understand!
barbazoo
Here's a real world example with Dia: I open https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/wildfires-track... and ask Dia
> how were wildfires this year compared to last?
Looking at the page, it's immediately obvious that 2025 was worse than 2024 but much better than 2023. What did Dia come up with:
> Wildfires in Canada this year have been severe, but last year saw even more land burned.
> According to the CBC wildfire tracker, Canada experienced two of its worst wildfire seasons on record in recent years. In 2024, more than five million hectares burned, making it an extremely destructive year. However, 2023 was even worse, with wildfires scorching 16 million hectares—over three times as much land as in 2024.
> Alberta, including the tourist town of Jasper, was hit especially hard in 2024, with a third of the community burning in July. Early signs suggest that 2025 could also be an active wildfire season, particularly in Western Canada.
> So, while 2024 was devastating, 2023 remains the most destructive recent wildfire season in terms of area burned.
It didn't even know what year it was, it's just a gimmick. I get that you want to be part of the gold rush trying to capture market share by slapping AI on something people use every day. It's just not useful enough yet and hallucinations make it even worse.
What I personally like most about Arc is
- the bookmark system, i.e. persistent tabs
- vertical tabs
- spaces, it's nice to have work separated from other stuff
- nice to look at, it's all very pretty in my opinion
- the fact that it was a fresh new look at what a browser should be without adding much of the AI hype
felarof
> It didn't even know what year it was, it's just a gimmick.
I understand. But we are still in early stages of product-market-fit here, AI agent integration with browsers should get lot better.
Thank you! We are adding vertical tabs already, we will look into adding persistent tabs.
Regarding UI, we want to put a fresh coat on top of chromium. But building a new UI layer (like Arc) would involve throwing away a lot of chromium code and I think that comes with its own cost, like sacrificing security updates from Google (which I feel The Browser Company also realized and started to invest when building Dia).
blairbeckwith
Honestly, Zen has done a good job of replicating most of the best parts of Arc; the big missing piece, IMO, is Little Arc, which was pretty workflow-changing. I'd love to see Little Arc / temporary browser windows become more common.
evo_9
Agree - plus it’s a FF fork so it allows UBlock.
dang
Recent and related:
Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45126358 - Sept 2025 (484 comments)
billconan
I want the vertical tabs and custom webpage scheme (I created a dark scheme for HN). After learning that they discontinued Arc for Dia, I even started my own https://github.com/shi-yan/shrome.
billconan
nvm, just saw this https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/67...
felarof
Yep, we are enabling this as well. I think it'll take a while for google chrome to roll it out.
cranberryturkey
If it support plantuml and mermaid that would be awesome
felarof
Hmm, wdym?
andrewflnr
Native viewing of those diagram formats in the browser, I guess. Seems niche, but I wouldn't turn it down. :)
null
We were Arc fans, now building an open-source alternative (YC S24).
With Arc selling to Atlassian, figured it's good timing to ask: what features do you actually miss? We are working on implementing some obvious ones (vertical tabs, workspaces) but honestly not sure what matters vs. what's just cool.
Feature requests: https://github.com/browseros-ai/BrowserOS/issues/99
We are still early but shipping fast.