You ever try a new piece of tech and immediately want to love it, but after a few hours you can feel the gaps? That is where I landed with OpenAI’s Atlas browser.
I stayed up until about 2:00 a.m. the first night trying to rebuild my Comet shortcuts inside Atlas. The idea made sense: OpenAI, my custom GPTs, my projects, and my browsing all in one place. But the actual experience is still in that “almost there” stage.
Quick Answer
Atlas is promising, but I would not replace Comet with it yet. The biggest reason is that Atlas can act like an agent, but it does not handle multi-step browsing tasks as smoothly.
Comet still feels better for chained commands, browser profiles, and day-to-day workflow automation. Atlas has the advantage of OpenAI memory and fast updates, but it needs more browser basics before I would move everything over.
AI Browsers Are Splitting Into Two Groups
The easiest way to understand the current AI browser space is to split it into two categories: summarization browsers and agentic browsers.
Summarization browsers help organize or summarize what is already on a page. Dia was one of the first I played with in that category. It could make a web page easier to understand and gave browsing some nice quality-of-life improvements.
Agentic browsers are different. They can click, navigate, and interact with pages for you. Comet was the first one that really felt like that to me. It was not just summarizing a page anymore. It was starting to automate parts of a normal browsing workflow.
- Summarization browsers help explain or organize page content.
- Agentic browsers can click through websites and perform actions.
- Atlas is trying to be agentic, but the execution still feels early.
Why Agentic Browsing Matters
When people hear “AI browser,” they often jump to the scary version: a browser ordering things online or making decisions without you. That is not the part I am interested in.
The practical version is much simpler. Imagine you are inside Google Cloud Console and cannot remember where the API key settings are. Normally, you click through menus, search documentation, or Google the answer.
With a good agentic browser, you can say something like, “Find my API key settings,” and it starts navigating the console for you. That is the useful part. It saves time on little tasks that are annoying, repetitive, or buried in confusing menus.
Where Atlas Falls Short
Atlas does have an agent mode, but you have to switch into it. That sounds like a small thing, but it changes how natural the browser feels.
The bigger issue is what happens after the first command. In my testing, once Atlas finishes the first agent action, it drops back into the normal AI mode. That means it does not keep going through a sequence the way Comet can.
For example, I want to be able to say, “Open YouTube, grab this transcript, then go to the comments and check what people are saying.” In Comet, that kind of chained workflow is much smoother. In Atlas, it tends to do the first part and stop.
That matters because the whole point of an agentic browser is reducing friction. If I have to keep restarting the agent or re-prompting after each step, it starts to feel less like automation and more like a regular assistant sitting next to the browser.
What Atlas Gets Right
The strongest part of Atlas right now is how it connects to OpenAI’s broader memory and chat experience. Your chats are stored on OpenAI’s side, so the context can carry across devices.
That becomes interesting once you think beyond traditional bookmarks. If a browser can remember what you were working on, you could eventually ask, “What was that page I was reading the other day about AI browsers?” and have it pull that context back up.
That is the part of Atlas that feels genuinely useful. Not because it replaces every browser feature today, but because it hints at a different way of finding your own work later.
The Missing Browser Basics
Atlas still has some regular browser features to catch up on. Profiles are the big one for me. In Comet, I use separate profiles for work and personal browsing so logins and context stay separate.
Atlas does not have that profile setup yet. Since it is based on Chromium, the foundation is there, but the feature is not part of the current experience.
Extensions are also not fully where I want them. You can install extensions, but the integration feels incomplete. For example, you do not get the normal icon bar up top where you can pin something like 1Password.
Those details sound small until you try to use the browser all day. Password managers, profiles, bookmarks, and extensions are not bonus features. They are part of the reason people can actually switch browsers.
- No proper profile setup yet.
- Extension support feels incomplete.
- Pinned extension icons are missing.
- Data sync and bookmark integration still need work.
Visual Browsing Versus DOM Browsing
Another important difference is how Atlas reads pages. Some AI browsers can work with the DOM, which means they can pull information directly from the structure of the web page.
Atlas does not do that right now. It visually grabs text more like a screen reader reading what is visible, instead of inspecting the underlying page structure.
That approach can work, but it is not as precise or as fast when you want to do more than grab the first obvious piece of information. For deeper automation, DOM access matters.
Why I Am Still Optimistic
Even with the rough edges, I am not writing Atlas off. OpenAI is moving quickly. I have already seen several updates roll out since launch, which tells me they are testing, fixing, and paying attention.
Atlas feels early, but not abandoned. The question is how quickly OpenAI can close the gap on the everyday browser features and make agent mode feel continuous instead of one step at a time.
Key Takeaways
- Atlas is not ready to replace Comet for my workflow yet.
- The biggest limitation is that Atlas does not chain agent commands smoothly.
- Comet still feels stronger for real agentic browsing and multi-step tasks.
- Atlas has promising OpenAI memory across devices, which could eventually change how we think about bookmarks.
- Profiles, extension integration, data sync, and DOM support are the main missing pieces.
- OpenAI is updating Atlas quickly, so it is worth watching.
Watch the Video
The video above for the full walkthrough of how Atlas feels compared with Comet, where agent mode breaks down, and why I still think OpenAI could catch up if the updates keep coming.
