This text reviews my experience with the Manus Browser Operator extension, released on November 18. The company presented the tool as a way to turn any regular browsing session into something guided by artificial intelligence, ready to act directly inside the pages you already use.
The promise was straightforward. Install the extension, activate the connector, and start delegating tasks. No heavy setup, no complicated adjustments, no configuration screens. In theory, everything should be ready to work within seconds.
The goal here is to test that promise in practice. To see what the tool gets right, where it struggles, how it consumes credits, and whether it can handle basic tasks before attempting anything more advanced.
This matters because Manus promotes itself as a solution for people who deal with login-restricted platforms, long workflows, and professional tools. The expectation is to save time and reduce repetitive tasks. What I found in my tests, however, was far from what was advertised.
📌 When the AI needs a GPS to find social media jobs
In my first test with the Manus AI extension, I asked it to open my LinkedIn, filter social media jobs posted in the last seven days, and return the direct links.
It was a short and straightforward task. Even so, the AI took six minutes to finish and delivered only two roles that were actually related to social media. The rest were unrelated positions that appeared randomly inside the search results.
It also never went past the first page. The tool stopped there, without exploring more listings. The only part that worked correctly was the date filter.
When I repeated the same process manually, it took three minutes. I went through four pages and selected only true social media jobs.
Screenshot of the AI’s result
The output generated by Manus Browser. Despite the prompt requesting only social media roles, most listings returned by the AI were unrelated and limited to the first page of results.
📌 When the AI abandons the task halfway through
In my second test, the AI was supposed to open my Google Docs, access the text about the Global South and Bitcoin, and reorganize the content with more scannable subheadings while keeping my original style and all existing paragraphs. It understood the request, confirmed it would locate the correct tab, and started the process without difficulty.
Right after that, it froze. It stopped progressing altogether.
When I asked it to continue, everything changed. Instead of returning to the document, the AI said it would create a website to search for job listings using modern libraries and interactive filters. None of this matched my original command. It was as if the model had completely lost the thread. From that moment on, it never went back to the document and made zero edits.
On the second attempt, I repeated the exact same instruction in a fresh conversation. The behavior became even stranger.
Instead of performing the task, the AI entered a confusing loop. First, it said it would open the document. Then it claimed it would use Gemini. Moments later, it switched to creating a parallel version of the text. A few minutes after that, it said it needed to review the entire content and switched back to Google’s AI.
It also tried working with screenshots at one point. It went through all those stages without applying a single edit to the file.
The outcome was the same. No changes, just a sequence of steps that led nowhere.
Meanwhile, the credits evaporated. The Plus plan gives eight thousand credits per month. The tool burned through all of them between the job-search tests and the failed attempt to reorganize the document.
In just a few minutes, my balance went from full to zero, with no deliverable at the end. That makes the extension unusable for anyone who writes daily. A simple reorganization task should not consume almost the entire monthly limit.
📌 When the AI gets it right, but only for tasks any person would do faster
I also tested one of the prompts suggested on Manus’s own website. I asked it to find the five best sushi restaurants near me on Google Maps. The extension worked with fewer freezes compared to previous tests and produced a list in one minute, including ratings, addresses, and short summaries. The reading was accurate and the organization was clean.
Even so, the result didn’t reflect my actual location. The AI typed the name of my city “manually,” so the search depended more on what it wrote than on my real GPS position.
If I opened Google Maps myself, I would see a completely different list, because the app uses precise location data. That limits the usefulness of the test, since the whole promise is to operate directly inside the page.
Doing this manually is trivial. You can open Maps, set a minimum rating, and review the options in seconds.
On top of that, people looking for a place to eat usually check Instagram, TikTok, and visual reviews to confirm the atmosphere and dishes. The AI can’t evaluate any of that in this format.
I also compared it with Manus’s standalone agent, outside the extension. It produced a similar answer in three minutes and consumed 105 credits. The extension was faster and used only 33 credits. Even so, the efficiency gain doesn’t justify it. The task is far too simple to warrant using AI in the first place.
📌 When the AI promises to post on Twitter and delivers only an illusion
Another prompt listed on Manus’s website claimed that the extension could log into Twitter and automatically publish a post. I tested exactly that.
I asked it to post the message suggested by the company itself. The AI responded confidently from the start. It said the tweet had been published, confirmed it, claimed it was visible on my profile, and even “checked” the timeline to make sure everything was fine. The problem is that none of that actually happened. Not a single post was made.
The tweet button stayed grey the entire time, as shown in the image above, and the extension wasn’t able to click or trigger the action. Even so, the AI kept insisting that everything had been completed successfully. It was pure automatic speech with no connection to what was really happening in the browser. To make matters worse, this test consumed 126 credits.
📌 When the promise of automation doesn’t match reality
On Manus’s website, the extension is described as a tool capable of handling complex tasks directly inside the browser. The idea is that you can delegate entire processes and trust the AI to manage them while you focus on more important work.
But in practice, that’s not what happened. I requested simple tasks. Nothing involving code, long workflows or advanced automation. Even so, the AI couldn’t complete what was asked.
This undermines confidence in the extension. If basic tasks already drain the entire credit balance and still fail to reach a conclusion, it’s hard to imagine relying on it for something more elaborate, like real automation or structured routines.
The only part that consistently worked was basic navigation, but any browser already does that without AI. It’s not a meaningful advantage.
For anyone who depends on the browser as a work tool, this doesn’t pay off. In the end, Manus Browser feels like a product released before it was ready.
