A startup known as Pig.dev that participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch was engaged on a probably revolutionary thought: AI agentic tech to regulate a Microsoft Home windows desktop.
However in Might, the founder introduced he was abandoning the tech and pivoting his firm to one thing totally totally different: Muscle Mem, a cache system for AI brokers that enables them to dump repeatable duties.
An early-stage YC firm pivoting is nothing out of the abnormal, in fact. 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 named Browser Use.
Browser Use surged to recognition when the Chinese language agentic instrument Manus, which relied on it, went viral. Browser Use primarily scans the buttons and components of an internet site to show them right into a extra digestible, “text-like” format for brokers, serving to the AI perceive how you can navigate and use the web site.
In the course of the Y Combinator podcast, launched Thursday, associate Tom Blomfield likened Pig to the Browser Use for Home windows desktops. The podcast featured Amjad Masad, the founder and CEO of fashionable vibe-coding startup Replit.
Masad, Blomfield, and YC associate David Lieb had been discussing how long-term laptop use of hours, fairly than minutes, was nonetheless a stumbling block for brokers. Because the context window for reasoning grows, an agent’s accuracy wavers whereas LLM prices improve.
“The recommendation I’d give founders at this time is taking both Browser Use or Home windows automation with Pig and attempting to use that into enterprise, right into a vertical trade,” Blomfield recommended.
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Masad agreed. “The second that expertise works, these two corporations are going to do actually, very well,” he mentioned.
However alas, Pig’s founder Erik Dunteman has already given up on the thought. In his submit in Might, he defined that he at first wished to run a cloud API product (a typical method of delivering AI tech). However his clients didn’t need that. So he tried promoting it as a dev instrument. They usually didn’t need that both.
“What customers within the legacy app automation house really need is handy me cash, and obtain an automation,” he mentioned. Primarily, they wished to rent a guide to make their desired Home windows robotic course of automations work for them.
However Dunteman didn’t need to do one-off tasks. He wished to construct improvement instruments. So he deserted Pig and began engaged on an AI caching instrument. Dunteman declined additional remark about his resolution to ditch Home windows automation, though the Pig.dev web site and GitHub paperwork stay accessible.
Nevertheless, Dunteman did inform us his new instrument was impressed by the pc use downside. 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 instances.
“What we’re engaged on now’s 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.
In all probability the corporate furthest alongside on that’s Microsoft. As an example, in April, Microsoft introduced it added laptop use tech to Copilot Studio for graphical consumer interfaces like Home windows. That tech was launched as a analysis preview. Plus, earlier this month, Microsoft introduced an agentic instrument in Home windows 11 that helps finish customers handle settings.
