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by suchintan·1y ago·view on hn ↗
1. Yes absolutely. But the issue is a little bit more nuanced than that. Websites without APIs don't have them for one of two reasons: (1) They want to protect their data (LinkedIn) or (2) can't be bothered to make an API (boutique websites, government portals). This solves that problem, but also makes it so these websites never have to build an API (after LLM costs go down).

2. We don't want Skyvern to be used on websites that prohibit this kind of behaviour (LinkedIn is the obvious example). Specifically, we didn't open source any of our anti-bot or captcha related code because we get requests to make "Reddit upvote rings" and such. We don't want to support bad actors like that

(3) I think this is a net net good thing. AI browser automations= less need for APIs = no need to maintain both an API and UI = streamlined experience + less code = simpler systems

(4) I'm not 100% sure about this one. We usually just assume companies don't build APIs because they don't have budget for it. Ie for non malicious reasons. Companies like LinkedIn will likely thwart any attempts at automation, but we're not interested in participating in this cat mouse game

1 comments
> after LLM costs go down

I think 100 Gb of GPU memory will always cost multiples of CPU + regular memory.

Using LLMs and computer vision for these kinds of tasks only make sense in small scales. If the task is extensive and repeated frequently, you're better off using an LLM to generate a script using Selenium or whatever, then running that script almost for free (compared to LLM). O1 is very good at it, by the way. For the $0.10 of 1 page interaction charged by Skyvern, I can create several scripts using O1.