Introducing Web Applets, Rupert Manfredi

Natural language UIs are touted by many to be the future of user interfaces. But right now, they still look a lot like the past: a text-based prompt, with text-based answers. (If you squint, it could be MS-DOS.) While there’s growing support to bring richer, more graphical interfaces to these systems, they mostly rely on proprietary, centralized integrations. Will the future of computing look like a handful of privately controlled platforms, or an open thriving ecosystem like the web?

Web Applets are a new open standard for allowing language models to use rich, graphical software, built upon the web.

They are small, local-first, interoperable bits of software that can be used and read by both a human and a machine. This talk introduces the problem that Web Applets aims to solve, shows how they work, and reveals a few examples in action. Attendees will be encouraged to integrate Web Applets into their own applications and collaborate with us in shaping the technology’s future, to help keep software open!