Chat4Data is not really a reaction to traditional data extraction or web scraping tools and their shortcomings.
No. Imagine writing an essay justifying why you were moving on from your candle business at the dawn of electric light. Electric intelligence is here — and it would be naive of us to pretend it doesn’t fundamentally change the kind of product we need to build to meet the moment.
Let us be even more clear: traditional web scraping tools, as we know them, will die. Much in the same way that search engines and IDEs are being reimagined. That doesn’t mean we’ll stop searching or coding. It just means the environments we do it in will look very different, in a way that makes traditional web scraping tools feel like candles — however thoughtfully crafted. We at Lumoris Technologies Inc. are getting out of the candle business when it comes to web scraping. You should too.
The next-gen tool to get web data will be a copilot tool. We believe this more than ever, and we're already seeing it in three ways:
GUI or coding won't remain the primary interfaces for web data extraction. Complex coding and clunky GUIs are barriers. Natural language is rapidly becoming the default way people interact with technology. Chat interfaces already behave like browsers and SaaS tools: they search, read, generate, respond, and interact with APIs, LLMs, and databases. People spend hours a day in these interfaces. If you're skeptical, ask a cousin in high school or college—natural language interfaces, which abstract away the tedium of older computing paradigms, are here to stay.
But the Web and browsers aren't going anywhere—at least not anytime soon. Webpages won't be replaced—they'll remain essential. Our tabs aren't expendable; they're our core context for web scraping. That's why we believe the most powerful interface for AI web scraping will be an AI chat interface integrated directly into the browser—a browser extension.
New interfaces start from familiar ones. In this new world, two opposing forces are simultaneously true. How we all use computers is changing much faster (due to AI) than most people acknowledge. Yet at the same time, we’re much farther from completely abandoning our old ways than AI insiders give credit for. So we still offer our users Quick reply buttons in a chat interface. (These buttons, will eventually be removed in future updates so Chat4Data can respond in aa more open, natural way. No rigid decision trees, just fluid conversation that feels more human.)
This is why we're building Chat4Data—an AI web scraping extension that embodies our original ambition: a true successor to traditional scrapers, and perhaps even the "public web database" we've always envisioned. In the future, users won't need to know where data is stored—they'll simply chat with AI, which will automatically retrieve authoritative data from the entire web. While AI-powered search today is already replacing traditional methods, current AI still struggles with real-time data, batch processing, and metadata. We're actively exploring ways to close these gaps. Chat4Data represents our vision for the future of web data extraction—conversational, contextual, and built on the foundation of what users already know.
And when we started to actually build this tool several months ago, the team agreed on one thing. We want to leverage AI not just in our product, but in how we build it. By integrating tools like Cursor for AI-assisted coding, Web Studio for rapid website iteration, and Claude Artifact for generating engaging social media content, we've dramatically accelerated our development cycles. These AI-powered workflows allow us to prototype, iterate, and ship faster than ever before, freeing our team to focus on creativity and strategic thinking rather than repetitive tasks. The result is a leaner, smarter, and more agile approach to building Chat4Data.
To be clear, chat4data is still in its early stages and we might fail. Or we might partially succeed but not win. We still assume we don’t know.