Browsers and UIs are dead. Everything is chat

I'm I'm in, like, a weird spot because I I so heavily agree and disagree at the same same point.

Can't imagine that everything being a chat interface

is the in the right call. Like, nobody wants a chat bar added to every website ever. Yeah. I feel like the people that are saying, like, there's gonna be no more browser, they're just, like, life maxing to the fullest.

Who is ordering Starbucks with chat GPT, and will an agent just make the perfect UI for you? That's what we're talking about today. We're live at JS Nation.

Shout out JS Nation in Amsterdam.

Some beautiful scenery here. I'm here with Wes. Here with Scott. And Wes is gonna be giving the talk, agentic interfaces, tools, skills, generative UI, and WebMCP. So we thought we'd pick his brain,

see see what he's gonna be talking about today. Yeah. I'm I'm stoked about it. This this is really fun. We have, like, this nice setup. I'm I'm happy to talk here. And I'm doing my talk on, like you said, agentic interfaces and, like, generative interfaces. Because there's there's a lot of talk going on right now saying that, like, either, like, the web is dead or the web is going to be headless or chat is the final interface or these little components that are inlined inside of your your chat interface are, like, going to replace websites. And I'm I'm in, like, a weird spot because I I so heavily agree and disagree at the same same ESLint.

And that's gonna be what what my talk is gonna be about as well as as WebMCP, which is we had a whole episode on WebMCP, and I don't know if this is necessarily about the tech. Anytime you use the word MCP, everybody's like, skills are better.

I'll give me a COI, and that's all I need. And then everyone's like, no. MCP is better. And, like, I don't give a shit about the, like, actual specification because whatever ends up being the spec, I don't think we're there yet. Yeah. I'll just prompt it to convert it to that end spec. I don't necessarily care about the specs here. I more care about, like, what does user interface look like from a standpoint of both agents using it as well as us and the people using it. Yeah. I'm I'm really

interested to see your talk because I've done so very little research on any of this stuff, but I did just see yesterday, Hyundai announced that they were having a new future style interface that they're developing that included things like telling your car to turn my heated seats on and stuff and it was all very LLM based UI inside of a car and I like my Hyundai a lot. Yeah. I love my my UI for all that thing and I'm not necessarily one of these people that's like you've got to have tactile buttons for everything. I know it's a really strong opinion, but I Sanity imagine that everything being a chat interface

is the in the right car. Yeah. Especially in a car where, like, you have to pay attention to the Node. Turn my turn to the Yarn. Yeah. You're, like, in a thread of chats. Yeah. So that's what my talk is about. It's, like, sometimes

you want no UI at all. Like, some like, I think about my smart home.

I in a lot of cases, I shouldn't even have to tell it when to turn on the lights. Yes. It should just be learning from context. Right. Sometimes you want, like, a, like, a voice UI as well. And then and then when you get to the actual UI, like, you want to, like, view a shopping list of what you have, sometimes you wanna be able to just, like, type into a chat and, like like, sort of batch process that. But then sometimes you wanna be able to to click the buttons. And and that's what MCP UI is is and, like, right now, they're just, like, inlining these, like, little components inside of your chat, and it's kinda slow, but, like, not knocking it for that. Yeah. But I I kinda feel, like like, the WebMCP, which is what this is is it allows you to expose the tooling of your website as MCP tools. So, like, you visit a website. Like, I have my example is, like, I have a grocery app, and you can, like, add an item, mark as as whatever, reorder, add a store, you know, all the all those typical things. So you expose all of those tools via WebMCP.

Yeah. And then, like, an agent, like, I have Claude hooked up to the WebMCP browser, then I'm able to just use the website normally.

And then I am also able to just, like, prompt it from my cloud or chat GB or whatever it is that I want. And it and and then it can also be hooked up to other things as Wes. Because, like, you you might be looking at it being like, that's just like a chat bar you added to your website. And, like, nobody wants a chat bar added to every website ever.

That's not a good experience. I wanna use my agents and hook it up to to that website, or I wanna hook it up to my Google Calendar and my groceries and my, like, fridge camera or all that, whatever it is.

So I think that that's that's the moves because I'm I'm calling it clicks and clankers.

It's like, sometimes I wanna click, and sometimes I just wanna, like, prompt. Yeah. And then sometimes I wanted to just, like, figure out what the UI should should be for me. Right? And sometimes just having a visual,

even if you are prompting, can change things. I mean, we saw this in our our, calendar challenge Wes even though my calendar did win the calendar challenge, there was no UI for it in terms of a calendar.

There Wes no UI. And then they And a lot of people said

they needed that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah. I mean, I think in an ideal world, this it's cool that, okay, let's say everything does happen in chat, but I I think that's too idealistic thinking. I think there's a time and a place for the MCP apps and a time and a place for a full full on UI. Think think, like, power users.

Think, just like maybe you don't wanna have individual m c m c MCP apps, but with WebMCP, you expose all of the the actions that you can perform, and then an agent does it on your behalf. Yeah. So

see the people just don't wanna read that much text too. Right. You know, as someone with dyslexia,

I don't wanna read Yeah. A bunch of text back and forth. But, like, it's not just text, though. Like, the web the MCP apps is, like, they'll inline the components into it. So you can click in things, but, like, I have a hard time believing that, like, just these little contextual components in your chat, many cases, that's great. You know? Like, I I'm customer support. I need some stats on a specific thing. I want, like, a couple buttons to, like, refund somebody.

But then, like, other cases, like, I'm trying to think, like, I'm going through my life and using all the websites, you know, like social media.

I I'm not gonna sit there and type show me x, y, and z. Right. Like, it's all algorithm based, and I just wanna, like, sit there and consume. Or, like, if I'm shopping like, a lot of people are saying, like, the future of shopping. Say, I need shoes, and then boom. The shoes are shipped to your door. And, like, that just reminds me of, like, the Soylent. Were you around for when Soylent happened? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All these tech bros were like, you just drink this goo, and you don't have to think about eating anymore. I'm like, no. I enjoy looking at like, what's on the website. I like going to filtering for what's on sale, and I like that. Oh, if you like this thing, then there's recommended items. And, like, I don't know that you can, like, replicate that interface.

It's it it will eventually break outside the chat into, like, full screen, sidebar, and whatever. Like, it's not gonna be this little block inside chat forever. Okay. What if what if this is all the precursor to something like in the matrix? You say never seen matrix. Okay. Well, I I I realized that. So let me describe it here. There's a you're you're you have full vision taken over. Yeah. You're in a big white room, and you say, give me all the blue shirts, and all the blue shirts fly in, you can

physically paw through the blue shirts. I don't know that I want a blue shirt. And then well, then you say, I don't know if I want a blue shirt. Surprise me. More shirts come in. You can paw through that. But I don't wanna have to say that. I warp it to just search this app. JS you're gonna say, I want all the blue shirts, and then it's gonna be, like, brought to you by Old Navy, and it's like, then they're gonna Well, that's another thing is, like, are we oh, yeah. Now the the open web is now guarded by these, like, four companies that you have to pay for. And if you don't have an app, then, like, your your shopping might not surface in the chat interface. Or or you get the free version, but they're gonna break with you. Results. Those companies are salivating over doing exactly that. Yeah. And what are you gonna do to stop it? I don't think you're gonna yeah. Yeah. Like Here here's another another example that's not AI is ordering online groceries. Yeah. Do you guys order groceries online? We started doing, like, order for pickup instead of order for delivery, but yes. You did too? Yes. So lot of people love it because they just they know what they want. I want the chicken, and I don't care what the price JS, and just add it to my cart. And I we we do the online shopping quite a bit as well when we're busy and we just need x, y, and z. But I primarily

love just going to the grocery store No. Thank you. Cruising around,

looking at the samples, looking at stuff, getting ideas, what's on sale. That whole experience is so much more enjoyable versus the, like, half an hour I'm sitting clicking through all the freaking carrots and shit. And Yeah. You see the tiny little photo that's not actually

I don't like the experience of ordering groceries online. Let me tell you. For me, Farmer's Market, all day. I'll go I got time for the Farmer's Market. You there we got a bag. You can you can pay $5 and get a big old bag of vegetables at the Denver one. That's great. I'll do that all day. Yeah. But if if you're gonna send me to walk through the aisles of a grocery store Yeah. I I would there's

infinite things I would rather do Yeah. Just because of the chaos of it all. I think that that's where it comes down to JS, is the task you are trying to do to replace, is it annoying? Is it something you would, like, hire out to an assistant to do Yeah. Because it is just busy work and it's frustrating. Like, my, the example I give is, categorizing my expenses in FreshBooks. Yes. FreshBooks has not integrated any AI stuff at all, and I'm just begging them, like, how do you not know what category this is? It like, I I had to build my own thing that pulled my expenses out, pull the categories, categorize them, and push them back into FreshBooks.

And or, like, if it was a Canadian vendor, then it had to check a box for adding HST, Canadian tax. Right? That's such busy work that I hate doing.

Yes.

And I I wanna just prompt that away because it's not something I want to Yeah. Enjoy. To make room for the things in life that you enjoy. Exactly. And not be like, AI, experience this art piece for me and tell me what people feel with it. You know? You know? I feel like the people that are saying, like, there's gonna be no more browser, they're just, like, life maxing to the fullest. I think there there's a time and a place. Right? Exactly. Right? I I think this will just be something that, yes, I like to use it via the chat app. Like, my calendar is another one. Don't make me click and find everything. I just wanna type. I what I did here, I took the email from JS nation flights, copy pasted it into Gemini, and said, just add these to my calendar. Yep. You Node? I don't wanna fuss with it anymore. That's exact exactly what I want for that type of thing. What I want is to be able to chat

and just say,

hey. Where is the pre party at? And that way, it can just tell me instead of the rest of the syntax team making fun of me for asking you to do your job. Dump all the info that you know Yeah. And you can just chat that info or, like, hook it up to the the website or whatever. And that's that's the ideal world. So, there was a talk today on MCP

apps. Yeah. And the the scenario they gave was someone that's planning a wedding. And so when you're planning a wedding, you need to know, like, what date it is. So you you would wanna see an embedded calendar. You need to order flowers, so you're using Amazon, and you get to see an embedded product card. Yeah. You need to book a venue. The thing is that they always show you, oh, here's three flowers.

Yeah. Yeah. Well and that's Life is more complicated than that. Exactly. So I think, like, that's the happy path, but we're talking about the nonhappy path, which is probably the majority of what we do on the web. Yeah. So I mean I mean, I think the strength is connecting data that Yeah. Is difficult to connect otherwise. Yeah. You know? But I think just I think you're on the right track here where it's like, everything's being hyped to you. It's saying it's gonna replace everything. There's it's gonna be a fine line. There's Here's here's the other point of it is

some of these companies will not want their whole brand and and everything exposed as simply just an API Yeah. To a chat app. Something like Century, yeah, they they love that. You can surface all the data. They can help you fix it. Great. But, like, I think about booking my airline ticket. All of the, like, dark pattern upsells that they have, is the airline going to simply just want to become, like, a utility where you can just book a flight? They'll just make a deal with the providers to be able to insert those dark patterns into the resources. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. They they certainly will. Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't know. It's it's a weird world. I've never been, like, so excited about something and, like, also, like, I I I think it's just gonna be just like when the iPhone came out, just like when voice came out. These are just more surface areas for our applications.

And this, like, agentic UI generative UI. And the one thing we didn't even talk about is this, like UI. Yeah. Generated Yeah. UI is, like, do you want to choose what the UI is, or do you want the LLM to just make a whole bunch of HTML for you? And the answer is probably somewhere in between. Yeah. You wanna give it a couple components that you've made, but then it can figure out how to piece them together. There's a whole bunch of, like, specs. Open UI is is one of them right now.

Probably somewhere in between there. But, like, the question is is, like, can the user or the LM make a better UI than the company that knows their product really well? So far, the answer is, well, maybe. Like, some of the Vibe Node stuff is like, yeah. That's a better UI for what I want it for. Yeah. But then some of these, like, Vibe Node ones are just

the the l m just cannot make, like, a very good UX. It's more personalized apps, I think. Yeah. Mhmm. So each user might have a specific use case. Like, I wanna do one specific thing.

And if the AI can generate the UI, great. But the user has to know what they want. Yeah. But it I I think what to your point, I don't think it'll ever replace, like, really good UX or, like Yeah. Because the company knows their product best. They know their data best. So they're gonna be able to do that. But So Yeah. Another example I have in my talk is smart home where,

like, you just said, the user has to tell them what they want. And as a user, I don't know what I want my smart home dashboard to be. I want I want you to tell me because you have all the information. You know what cameras have triggered alerts. You know the humidity in my house. You know when I turn lights on and off. And if if I want either automations or, like, a dashboard for my smart home, I want the we have so much context about my house in my home assistant. Yeah. I want the the AI to just programmatically make a dashboard for me given what it knows about what has happened recently and and whatnot. You know? Like, oh, hey. We figured, oh, you always turn on your lights at 9AM.

We'll do it for you, or maybe we'll pop a button up here so you can just tap it while you're walking by. And I think that's gonna be the killer killer use case is just like like adding on UI or or generating what what you see in a, like, a smart like, we've had this with algorithms, but, like, even a step further. Right. I think if it gets it right, that's amazing. Yeah. Can it get it right? We'll see. I mean, that's that's the future from Iron Man. That's,

Jarvis. Are you well, he has this AI that he can literally talk to normally, and then, like, it knows his vitals. It knows everything. And, to to what you're saying is it has all the data and is making the right choices. But if that's that's the big if JS, will it be able to make those choices, and can we reliably depend on it? And And or can it learn? You know? Like, I don't mind using it for, like, a year. Yeah. But I cannot learn my patterns. Like, even, like, I get in my Tesla,

and it, like, it's like, do you wanna go to this, like, random place you went to a year ago? Like, no. I went there once. Why would you think that I'm going there right now? Like, obviously, the algorithm for figuring that out is is is off. I'm actually surprised sometimes Google so I use Google Maps and Android Auto. Yeah. Sometimes it's like a Wednesday, and it's like, oh, you go to the gym on Wednesdays at this time, so it pops up. Yeah. The Google one's very good. So

But the That that has surprised me before. It's like the one useful thing. I was like, oh, yeah. Yes. I do wanna go there. So I I I do go here every Thursday at 04:00. You know?

That feels a little grim to me for some reason. Really? I don't know what it is about it. So it's like your routine, your repetitive.

Like, humans Yarn You are very predictable. And Yeah. Yes. I know what you need to do. All about patterns. Yeah. Would you like me to have a snack ready for you while you're there? You know? Oh, that'd work. Other than that, I I think that's it. Anything else to add? Let us know down below what you think. Is is the web dead? Is it all gonna be through chat apps in these little boxes inside, or or is it just another interface that's out? We'd be curious to see what you think. Yep. Yeah. I'm gonna give you a really hard question on stage. Can't wait to hear your time. Hope you're ready. Love hard questions. Shout out, JS nation. Thanks for Thank you, JS nation for having us. Wes love it. Cool.