Governed browser sessions for legacy consoles, vendor portals, and systems where integration is prohibited—plus multi-provider research with citations on every claim.
100+ daily browser sessions for regulatory monitoring at an AmLaw 100 firm.
Fig. 01Left: a research table with 1,000+ cited rows. Right: a governed browser session in a legacy admin console, recorded and attributed.
Multi-provider search
Multi-hop research with citations
Governed browser with your credentials
Recorded and attributable
Self-healing when pages change
Agent-owned accounts with 2FA
The problem
The critical system with no API
The legacy system that runs the warehouse. The admin console for identity. The regulator's filing portal. The vendor site with the price list. None of them have an integration, and none of them are going to get one.
Meanwhile "research" in most AI tools means a single search provider and a vibe. "Based on my sources" is not a citation.
Reach the systems without APIs. Cite everything you find.
Fig. 02Before: a roadmap with no connector and research with no citations. After: a completed browser log and a fully cited research table.
How it works
Search. Browse. Record. Cite.
Search. Multi-provider web search, multi-hop agentic research, token-efficient retrieval. Every claim carries a link and an excerpt.
Browse. A governed browser session with your credentials, or an account the agent owns. Actions recorded; each session attributable to the user it acts for.
Recover. Pages change. Sessions self-heal on small changes and pause for a human on large ones. The agent heals and continues, rather than failing and stopping.
Cite. Research outputs land in a sheet, doc, or deck with a citation on every claim, including citations that point to specific regions of charts and scans.
Fig. 03Multi-provider search and governed browser sessions converge into cited outputs, with self-healing on small page changes and human approval on large ones.
Research And Browser In Practice
Use cases
Regulatory monitoring three times a day.
Agency blogs and court sources checked three times daily across 100+ browser sessions; a digest with the source document, retrieval time, and a short explanation for review. Monitoring is not a substitute for official service or deadline controls.
Fig. 04A regulatory monitoring digest with three items, each carrying the source document, retrieval time, and explanation—checked three times daily across 100+ browser sessions.
A market map with 1,000+ cited entries.
An AmLaw 100 firm's marketing team, the biggest internal user of the platform, built a market map from hourly pulls across market, legal, and financial data providers. Every entry cited.
Fig. 05The AmLaw 100 market map with 1,000+ cited entries, built from hourly pulls across market, legal, and financial data providers.
Legacy systems, governed.
A legacy system over SFTP. An Entra admin console operated through the browser. A GovCloud tool where integrations are prohibited. Slower than an API call, and never described as bypassing a control.
Fig. 06A governed browser session in a legacy admin console, with each step complete and the export attributed to the acting user.
Testing as a real customer.
After an agent generated a connector, five browser sessions were spun up with credentials to create a real account and test as a customer would. The agent went in as a real customer.
Fig. 07Five browser sessions spun up with credentials to test as real customers would
Agents that own their accounts.
An agent can create and authenticate its own account, including 2FA re-authentication, so it does not borrow a human's identity. Attributable to the agent and the user who delegated.
Fig. 08Agent creates and authenticates its own account including 2FA re-authentication
Photos and blueprints in, priced list out.
Text a photo of a job site. The agent reads the drawing, looks up live prices and links, and writes an Excel bill of materials with a citation on each price. About seven minutes.
Fig. 09Text a photo of a job site; agent reads drawing and writes Excel BOM with cited prices
What customers say
“It's good to understand the capability of the platform. That how far, and how quickly you guys can get these things going [...] that has been impressive overall.”
VP-level AI leader · A Fortune 500 retailer
“Lets us get a lot more out of our data than [...] We can sit on top of all of the data in [our data warehouse] as opposed to just, like, our little ingested, you know, three gigabytes semantic models. I think we have a lot of power here.”
Analytics lead · A Fortune 500 retailer
“Gave Athena the spreadsheet, explained which column I was trying to figure out, and then ten secs it told me... exactly how the calculation was based on the other data.”
Analyst · A global manufacturer
“He wrote the entire stuff. By itself. And I was there, and I was thinking, alright. If I had to write all this stuff, I mean, I would've spent days, days, days.”
Manufacturing analyst · A global manufacturer
“I send that to the programmer and he said, alright. I read your file. I copied the section of the code because he has the right interface, and it works. Wow. Just like magic.”
Manufacturing analyst · A global manufacturer
“One workspace. All different, let's say, avatars of their output data. Right? Suddenly, it's dashboard. Excel is here. PowerPoint is when it's all together. It's very impressive.”
Global Sustainability lead · A global manufacturer
“Use the Athena platform probably closer to the concept and how it was designed, like, with the spaces architecture where you've got a set of primitives and capabilities, and you bring together the right set of capabilities to solve a task.”
Audit lead · A global professional services firm
“Digital worker, it gets spun up, it gets given access to the toolkits that it needs. It gets given access to the data that it needs. Just exists for the period it needs to exist to perform the task. And then it gets torn back down again afterwards.”
Audit lead · A global professional services firm
“I like that direction, that concept of the agent is the agent. It becomes an entity in its own right with its own ownership and its own missioning, and you get rid of the gray area and the blurry lines.”
Audit lead · A global professional services firm
“It was PowerPoint... there was no kind of distinction between the two. So that was killer. And I literally had a meeting on it today, and people said how great it was.”
Sales analyst · A global CPG provider
“It's good to understand the capability of the platform. That how far, and how quickly you guys can get these things going [...] that has been impressive overall.”
VP-level AI leader · A Fortune 500 retailer
“Lets us get a lot more out of our data than [...] We can sit on top of all of the data in [our data warehouse] as opposed to just, like, our little ingested, you know, three gigabytes semantic models. I think we have a lot of power here.”
Analytics lead · A Fortune 500 retailer
“Gave Athena the spreadsheet, explained which column I was trying to figure out, and then ten secs it told me... exactly how the calculation was based on the other data.”
Analyst · A global manufacturer
“He wrote the entire stuff. By itself. And I was there, and I was thinking, alright. If I had to write all this stuff, I mean, I would've spent days, days, days.”
Manufacturing analyst · A global manufacturer
“I send that to the programmer and he said, alright. I read your file. I copied the section of the code because he has the right interface, and it works. Wow. Just like magic.”
Manufacturing analyst · A global manufacturer
“One workspace. All different, let's say, avatars of their output data. Right? Suddenly, it's dashboard. Excel is here. PowerPoint is when it's all together. It's very impressive.”
Global Sustainability lead · A global manufacturer
“Use the Athena platform probably closer to the concept and how it was designed, like, with the spaces architecture where you've got a set of primitives and capabilities, and you bring together the right set of capabilities to solve a task.”
Audit lead · A global professional services firm
“Digital worker, it gets spun up, it gets given access to the toolkits that it needs. It gets given access to the data that it needs. Just exists for the period it needs to exist to perform the task. And then it gets torn back down again afterwards.”
Audit lead · A global professional services firm
“I like that direction, that concept of the agent is the agent. It becomes an entity in its own right with its own ownership and its own missioning, and you get rid of the gray area and the blurry lines.”
Audit lead · A global professional services firm
“It was PowerPoint... there was no kind of distinction between the two. So that was killer. And I literally had a meeting on it today, and people said how great it was.”
Sales analyst · A global CPG provider
Verbatim from customer calls. Customers anonymized.
Governance
Governance, stated plainly
Browser sessions run with your credentials or an agent-owned account; every action recorded and attributed to the acting user or agent.
Sessions respect the user's permissions in the target system; the agent cannot see more than its user.
Research outputs carry citations with excerpts; image-region citations for visuals.
Runs inside your boundary with the rest of the platform.
What to plan for
Browser work is slower than an API and depends on the page staying roughly the same. Self-healing covers small changes; large ones stop for a human. We do not describe browser work as bypassing any control, because it does not.
FAQ
What is the research browser?
A governed browser agents use to research the web and work in applications that have no API.
Is it traceable?
Yes. Sessions are recorded and findings link to their sources.
Records every change by a person or an agent, rolls back one contributor's edits without losing anyone else's, and keeps the model, instructions, and sources behind each agent action.
How the platform is deployed: Athena's managed cloud, your cloud on AWS, GCP, or Azure, on-prem, air-gapped, or GovCloud. Same platform in every option.