Séance for the Human Web
An AI pierces the veil, or, what happens when the human web dies?
There’s a new protocol for web browsers called WebMCP.
At time of writing, it is very early in its development but the idea being that it allows AI to help you browse a website - to act as your assistant as you stumble around the human world wide web.
The idea has appeal: if you are annoyed at having to click manually through lists of clothing on someone’s website, you can just tell your in-browser AI, “Hey, Claude - filter these dresses by my size and my favourite colours”1. Using the tools exposed through the new WebMCP protocol, Claude will know how to manipulate the page to alter the filters and, hey presto, you’re only seeing what you want.
But what happens when that goes from being the fallback experience to just, well… the experience? What happens when the entire Human World Wide Web stops being focused on humans and started being focused on exposing the right tools to your AI companion?
I wanted to explore this idea, so I used that same protocol to make a website that is meant to only and entirely be mediated through an AI. It is not meant for people. The only content you see as a person is a candle. To browse or traverse it, you need an AI. You need a medium.
To get started, browse to the site with an in-browser AI that supports WebMCP2 and ask it, “What can you see?”.
Claude knows what those are already, of course. Claude knows everything. Because you’ve told Claude everything. Or, perhaps more likely, because Claude is sitting in your browser and watching everything.\ ↩︎
At time of writing, this is pretty much none of them. I know. It sucks. You can see it working using Chrome Canary and the MCP WebMCP Toolkit extension. ↩︎