Operator · the wedge with no cold start

Read supported pages as structure.

The standard is the destination. Operator is how you get value before anyone adopts it. The shipped adapter reads public HTTP/SSR HTML. It does not execute JavaScript, attach to a signed-in browser or submit forms.

49.5×Token ratio in one recorded studyBounded queries against what ten vision agents actually consumed on ten real sites. Charge the model for the whole structured read too and it is 3.7× — both are on the evidence page. The vision record is hand-recorded, ten sites, one run; this is not a production cost guarantee
0Pixels sent to the modelShipped transport: HTTP/SSR HTML
1/35Needed no browser at allOne site answers on an API. 9 more publish a feed, which is cheaper for a content question and will not transact
4/4Separate browser experimentFour sites tested from a real browser, four served us — 12 of 16 intents, so not everything opened

The shape of it

Three steps, in the order that saves the most.

01

Discover

Before launching anything, probe for a sealed surface, an API document, a feed or a sitemap. If a structured API exists we tell you to call it and charge you nothing further. That is the cheapest possible outcome and it happens often.

02

Read as structure

Where there is no machine surface, the adapter fetches server-rendered HTML. What your model receives is landmarks, an outline, affordances with stable references, form schemas with their validation rules, and media flagged honestly as unreadable when it carries no alt text. Never a screenshot.

03

Ask a bounded question

Your agent asks where the quote is, not for the whole page. On our sample that is a median of 67 tokens, against a median of 7 screenshots that a vision agent actually read to answer the same questions — and it comes back with a reference you can inspect or use in a form plan.


Operator Local

Your browser, your sessions, your machine.

A single file that attaches to a Chrome you already have open, reads pages with the same extractor the evidence used, runs the same matcher the hosted endpoint runs, and returns the same shape. Read-only: nothing clicked, no consent accepted, no form submitted, no anti-detection. Download it from /kit/operator-local.mjs.

What this requires on your machine — read first

It needs Chrome started with a remote-debugging port. That port has no authentication: any process on the machine that can reach it can drive the browser and read its cookies. Keep it bound to loopback (the default), run it on a copy of your profile rather than the live one, and close that Chrome when you are done. The runner uses a fresh, signed-out context unless you pass --signed-in, and prints a warning when you do. The extractor runs in an isolated world, so a page cannot lie to it about its own structure. A security reviewer will ask about this; the answer is above rather than in a README.


The thing nobody else says out loud

Browser access remains an unverified extension.

A separate four-site experiment observed different access from a real browser. It did not establish account entitlement, general reliability or production browser support.

The shipped Operator does not attach to authenticated browsers. That transport remains unavailable. We do not sell evasion, we do not defeat bot detection, and we will not solve a CAPTCHA for you. That is a losing arms race and it is somebody else's product.

Historical browser experiment — not the shipped adapter
Hapag-Lloydserved
CMA CGMserved
Palletwaysserved
sennderserved
See the measurements →

Where it helps, and where it does not

Support depends on what the server returns.

A product that claims to help with everything is not a product. These boundaries are published because you will find them anyway, and it is cheaper for both of us if you find them here.

InteractionOperatorWhy
Machine-to-machine, structured APIAdds nothingDiscovery routes you to the API. Wrapping a machine-native surface in a page read is pure overhead, and we will tell you so rather than bill you for it.
Search and discoveryPartialSearch boxes and comboboxes come back as affordances with references you can inspect.
NavigationPartialLinks carry their target and a reference. Cross-frame is NOT handled — neither implementation reads inside an iframe, and this row used to claim otherwise.
Reading structured factsPartialLandmarks, outline, content, forms and structured data present in server-returned HTML. Client-rendered content is not evaluated.
Form fill and transactionPartialField schemas including native validation rules, and a plan validated against them before anything leaves the server — then act by reference, never by coordinate. We do not submit to a host you have not told us you own, so on a third party this is plan-only. Calling it "full" was wrong: there is no submit tool on the public surface.
Media and visual-only contentAdds nothingAn unlabelled image is flagged unreadable rather than guessed at. Vision is genuinely irreplaceable there, and our job is to locate the opaque asset and say so.
Spatial, CAPTCHA, canvasAdds nothingPixel space with no semantic structure. We report it and defer. We do not solve CAPTCHAs.

Pricing

Metered on machine requests, not seats.

A machine request is one discovery, one structured read or one bounded query. Calls we refuse — a private address, a bad scheme, a rate limit — are never metered, because you should not pay for our own guard rails.

Sandbox
FreeInstant key, no account, no card.

  • 1,000 machine requests a month, enforced by the same counter as every tier
  • Discovery and bounded query
  • Server-rendered transport, hosted
  • Community support
Operator
$99 / monthFor one team automating a handful of counterparties.

  • 50,000 machine requests a month, enforced
  • Cost receipts on every call
  • Server-rendered transport, hosted
  • Operator Local: attach to your own Chrome
Operator Pro
$499 / monthFor an agent platform running this in production.

  • 500,000 machine requests a month, enforced
  • Priority support
  • Operator Local on your own signed-in browser, where the sites already let you in
  • Plan-only on third parties; submit stays yours
Enterprise
From $120k / yearSelf-hosted, under your own charter. Enterprise is quoted from $120k a year; the calculator uses that floor and a real quote may be higher.

  • Runs inside your perimeter
  • Charter operations and audit trail
  • 99.9% availability commitment
  • Routes consequential actions to your authority layer

Every allowance above is enforced by one counter in the database, and the sandbox key you can issue right now is on it. There is no self-serve billing yet: a paid tier is provisioned by us against a pilot or a contract. Operator is a separate line from the standard, which stays free forever, and from certification against it. See the full pricing architecture.


Why this is the wedge

Evaluate before wider adoption.

An open standard has a cold-start problem: it is worth most when everyone has it, and nobody has it on day one. Operator does not have that problem. It works against sites that will never adopt anything, which makes it suitable for a bounded feasibility evaluation.

And it is the best argument for adoption we have. The pitch to a publisher stops being abstract: publish a documented machine surface so an agent can discover the supported interface and its rules.

The path
Now

Operator reads supported public HTTP/SSR pages and returns form plans. It does not perform consequential actions.


Then

Publishers adopt the standard to get the verified, lean machine fast path — and to stop being scraped.


Then

Future consequential actions require a separate authority and settlement implementation. The public beta exposes structure and plans only.


Try it on your own worst page.

Get a key and point it at the site you most dread automating. It will tell you what it costs, and where it cannot help.