Metis wot Dabira Omotoso and Shreya Saxena

Metis is a permission-first browser agent for Firefox that explores what it would look like if AI agents were a native browser capability, not something embedded into individual websites. Built around the emerging Web Agent API, Metis emphasizes explicit consent, transparent planning, and user control at every step. It enables multi-step workflows across tabs and sites—like drafting an email and adding an item to a shopping cart—while requiring clear, task-scoped approvals and providing real-time action narration and audit trails. Metis demonstrates how powerful browser-level agents can be both useful and trustworthy when permission boundaries are treated as a core design constraint, not an afterthought.