What if every website you visited didn't actually exist until the moment you asked for it? What if the entire web was a unique, AI-generated experience, created just for you, on the fly?
That's the core idea behind my latest project, Fauxmium.
Fauxmium is a proof-of-concept that explores what it's like to browse an effectively infinite web. Everything you see inside the Fauxmium browser is generated in real-time by AI. It is not real.
It works by launching a real Chrome browser, but with a twist. It intercepts every navigation and image request and routes them to a local server. That server then prompts a generative AI model to create the HTML and images for the URL you requested, streaming the content back to your browser. The result is a unique, ephemeral, and often surprising browsing session.
➡️ Check out Fauxmium on GitHub
Getting started is simple. If you have Node.js installed and a GEMINI API Key, you can run it with a single command in your terminal. I'd recommend running it with DevTools open to see what's happening under the hood.
npx fauxmium --devtools
Once it launches, just start typing in any URL you can imagine and see what the AI comes up with!
How It Works (The Gist)
Under the hood, Fauxmium combines a few key components:
- Browser Control: It uses Puppeteer to launch a headful instance of Google Chrome.
- Request Interception: Puppeteer intercepts every request and sends it to a local proxy server.
- AI Generation: The local server uses the Vercel AI SDK and the Google Gemini API to handle requests. It takes the URL you requested and uses it in a prompt to ask an AI model to generate the corresponding HTML page or image.
- Rendering: The generated content is streamed directly back to the browser and rendered.
Currently, it supports text generation from Google (Gemini), OpenAI, Anthropic, and Groq, with image generation handled by Gemini. You can tweak the prompts it uses by editing the text files in the prompts/ directory—they're re-read on every request, so you can experiment without restarting the server.
I lead the Chrome Developer Relations team at Google.
We want people to have the best experience possible on the web without having to install a native app or produce content in a walled garden.
Our team tries to make it easier for developers to build on the web by supporting every Chrome release, creating great content to support developers on web.dev, contributing to MDN, helping to improve browser compatibility, and some of the best developer tools like Lighthouse, Workbox, Squoosh to name just a few.
I love to learn about what you are building, and how I can help with Chrome or Web development in general, so if you want to chat with me directly, please feel free to book a consultation.
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