A startup referred to as Pig.dev that participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch was engaged on a probably revolutionary concept: AI agentic tech to regulate a Microsoft Home windows desktop.
However in Might, the founder announced he was abandoning the tech and pivoting his firm to one thing fully completely different: Muscle Mem, a cache system for AI brokers that permits them to dump repeatable duties.
An early-stage YC firm pivoting is nothing out of the bizarre, in fact. What’s attention-grabbing — and what sparked a dynamic dialog on Thursday’s Y Combinator podcast — is that Pig was engaged on pc use, one of many massive 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 known as Browser Use.
Browser Use surged to recognition when the Chinese language agentic software Manus, which relied on it, went viral. Browser Use primarily scans the buttons and parts of an internet site to show them right into a extra digestible, “text-like” format for brokers, serving to the AI perceive the best way to 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 common vibe-coding startup Replit.
Masad, Blomfield, and YC associate David Lieb have been discussing how long-term pc use of hours, somewhat than minutes, was nonetheless a stumbling block for brokers. Because the context window for reasoning grows, an agent’s accuracy wavers whereas LLM prices enhance.
“The recommendation I might give founders right this moment is taking both Browser Use or Home windows automation with Pig and making an attempt to use that into enterprise, right into a vertical trade,” Blomfield urged.
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Masad agreed. “The second that know-how works, these two firms 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 put up in Might, he defined that he at first needed to run a cloud API product (a standard method of delivering AI tech). However his prospects didn’t need that. So he tried promoting it as a dev software. They usually didn’t need that both.
“What customers within the legacy app automation house truly need is at hand me cash, and obtain an automation,” he mentioned. Basically, they needed to rent a marketing consultant to make their desired Home windows robotic course of automations work for them.
However Dunteman didn’t need to do one-off tasks. He needed to construct improvement instruments. So he deserted Pig and began engaged on an AI caching software. Dunteman declined additional remark about his resolution to ditch Home windows automation, though the Pig.dev website and GitHub documents stay out there.
Nonetheless, Dunteman did inform us his new software was impressed by the pc use downside. It’s chipping away at it from one other angle. The concept is to permit the agent to dump repeated duties to the Muscle Mem service so the agent can concentrate on reasoning for brand new issues and edge circumstances.
“What we’re engaged on now’s instantly impressed by and relevant to pc use, simply on the developer tooling layer. I stay very optimistic for pc use as ‘the final mile,’” he informed 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 illustration, in April, Microsoft announced it added pc use tech to Copilot Studio for graphical person interfaces like Home windows. That tech was launched as a analysis preview. Plus, earlier this month, Microsoft introduced an agentic tool in Windows 11 that helps finish customers handle settings.
