Published: 2026-09-07

A browser agent with two kinds of skill file — yours, and everyone's

Chapters / key moments (click to jump — plays here on the page)

Most agent memory is private by default. This splits it in two, and the split is the idea worth stealing. Personal skills are editable markdown files capturing your preferences and recurring workflows — "always include a source link", "leave missing prices blank" — written by the agent when it learns something durable. Shared website skills are different: they capture how to navigate a particular site, improve from successful runs across all users, and get updated as sites change. If a filter is buried in a menu the agent keeps missing, a site skill preserves the working path for everyone.

Source video

"Retriever Fully Free AI Agent: You ACTUALLY NEED THIS!" by AICodeKing — Watch on YouTube →

Gotchas & Caveats

A sponsored card appears next to results in free mode. That is the business model and it is disclosed in the product, but it means the output surface is not purely yours.
Shared site skills improve from other users' successful runs — good for navigation knowledge, and worth understanding as a data-flow property before pointing it at anything sensitive.
The job-application use case involves an agent filling forms with your details. The video's own advice to pause before submitting and read anything written about your experience is the right instinct and easy to skip.
Enrichment beyond the included allowance uses credits. Free mode is real but bounded.

Key Takeaways

Two skill layers, doing different jobs. Personal skills describe how you want to work; shared site skills capture knowledge about the website. Correcting the same navigation problem forever is the thing this is designed to stop.
Skills are readable, editable markdown in a skills library you can open — not an opaque memory store. The agent writes a lesson when it learns something durable rather than rewriting memory after every trivial task.
Two ways in. A Chrome extension — useful specifically because it works on sites you are already signed into — and a cloud dashboard for runs that do not need your session.
Free mode has an explicit shape. It covers the AI and cloud-browser time for eligible runs without spending credits, in exchange for a small sponsored card shown alongside the result, with daily fair-use limits. Services beyond the included allowance still consume credits. Worth knowing before planning a large scraping job.
Prompt patterns that matter for extraction tasks: name the columns you want and say explicitly what to do about missing data ("leave anything you can't find blank"). The verification advice is the useful half — check whether it picked the right product variant, and whether it confused a sale price with the normal one.
Demonstrated use cases: comparison tables across product pages, job search and application prefill with an explicit "pause before submitting" instruction, and working through practice problems from a page you already have open.

What you can actually set up from this

Extracted from the video's own transcript — the specifics the original summary left out.

Reproducible steps

Get started in free mode
Install the official Chrome extension, sign in and enable free mode, or use the cloud dashboard. Free mode covers the AI and cloud-browser time for eligible runs without spending credits, with a small sponsored card beside the result and daily fair-use limits; extra services such as enrichment beyond the allowance can still use credits.
Give it a scoped scraping task
His example prompt: compare the microphones on these pages; make a table with the model, listed price, connection type and product link; leave anything you can't find blank. Then check the table against the pages, especially the product variant and whether a sale price was mixed up with the normal price.
Prepare, but don't submit, applications
His example: use this resume to find junior front-end roles that allow remote work from my location, show why each role fits, then help me fill out the application for the one I choose, and pause before submitting.
Use the two kinds of skill file
Personal skills are markdown files you can read and edit in the skills library, written when the agent learns something durable (for example: every comparison includes a source link, missing prices stay blank). Separate shared website skills capture how to navigate a particular site and, per Retriever, are improved by successful runs and updated as sites change.
Connect MCP servers
In the extension settings open the tool section, add the server's URL and authenticate if needed; the server's tools then become available to Retriever.

Gotchas

Exposing the Retriever extension through MCP so another agent can operate your browser needs a subscription, as do background schedules and triggers.
At recording, the starter plan was listed at $9.99 a month with a monthly credit allowance.
The shared-skill quality claims are Retriever's own; the agent still has to apply saved guidance correctly.
Free mode shows ads alongside results.