TARS: The Agent That Actually Uses Your Computer
At Medevel.com, we have written about and published dozens of open-source automation tools, “autonomous agents,” and browser pilots. We’ve seen the GitHub repositories pile up, promising software that can do your job for you. Most of the time?
They break on a simple popup window or get confused by a login screen.
But TARS feels different.
What is TARS?
It isn’t just another wrapper for ChatGPT that writes code snippets. It’s a multimodal stack designed to actually drive your machine. It looks at your screen, understands the interface, and clicks the buttons.
Whether you are a terminal junkie or someone who wants a desktop app to handle the boring stuff, TARS is shipping actual, working code that bridges the gap between a chatbot and a human operator.
Here is why this project stands out in a crowded sea of “agents.”
Think of TARS not as a chatbot, but as a digital pair of hands. It is a full stack for building and running AI agents that can see (Vision) and act (GUI/CLI).
The project splits into two main flavors:
- Agent TARS (CLI): For developers who want to run agents from the terminal or integrate them into workflows.
- UI-TARS Desktop: A native application that gives you a visual interface to let the AI control your local or remote computer.
It’s built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which is quickly becoming the standard for how AI tools talk to data sources and external systems.
The Killer Features
Here is what makes TARS useful right now, not just in theory.
1. The Hybrid Browser Brain
Most agents fail at browsing because they either only look at the code behind the website (DOM) or they only look at a screenshot (Vision). TARS uses a Hybrid Strategy.
It reads the underlying structure of the page and looks at the visual layout. This means it doesn’t get stuck when a website uses weird custom buttons or popups that confuse standard scrapers.
2. One-Click CLI (That Works)
If you prefer the command line, the agent-tars CLI is surprisingly polished. It supports streaming output, so you can see what the agent is thinking and doing in real-time rather than waiting for a giant block of text.
It also handles “multi-file structured display,” meaning if you ask it to write code, it organizes the files neatly rather than dumping them all in one mess.
3. Remote Control
The desktop version (v0.2.0 and up) isn’t just for your local machine. It includes Remote Computer and Remote Browser Operators. You can effectively set up TARS on a server or a spare laptop and send it tasks to execute remotely. It’s like having a headless worker you can check in on.
4. The Sandbox (AIO)
Security is the elephant in the room with agents. You don’t want an AI deleting your home folder.
TARS introduced an AIO (All-In-One) Agent Sandbox. This creates an isolated environment where the tools run. It lets the agent go wild with shell commands and file manipulation without putting your main system at risk.
Other Features
- Natural language control powered by Vision-Language Model
- Screenshot and visual recognition support
- Precise mouse and keyboard control
- Cross-platform support (Windows/MacOS/Browser)
- Real-time feedback and status display
- Private and secure – fully local processing
Real-World Use Cases
So, what do you actually do with it? Here are the workflows where TARS shines.
The “Travel Agent”
Instead of opening five tabs to compare flights, you give TARS a prompt:
“I am in Los Angeles from September 1st to 6th with a $5,000 budget. Book the Ritz-Carlton closest to the airport on Booking.com and compile a transportation guide.”
Because TARS has Vision, it can navigate the date pickers, map views, and checkout flows on travel sites that usually block bots. It handles the entire process from search to cart.
Data Visualization on Autopilot
You can drop raw data or a request into TARS and ask for a chart. Using its MCP integrations, it can spin up a chart generation tool, process the data, and render the visual for you.
Example: “Draw me a chart of Hangzhou’s weather for one month.” -> TARS fetches the weather data and plots it.
Cross-Platform Testing
For developers, UI-TARS Desktop is a massive time saver for QA. You can instruct the agent to “Log in to the staging server, click through the new checkout flow, and report any errors.” It will physically click through the app just like a user would, catching visual bugs that code-based tests often miss.
The “Lazy” Researcher
Need to summarize news or find specific docs? TARS can browse the web, handle the “Accept Cookies” banners, scroll through infinite-loading pages, and extract exactly what you need without you lifting a finger.
Quick Start
# Launch with `npx`.
npx @agent-tars/cli@latest
# Install globally, required Node.js >= 22
npm install @agent-tars/cli@latest -g
# Run with your preferred model provider
agent-tars --provider volcengine --model doubao-1-5-thinking-vision-pro-250428 --apiKey your-api-key
agent-tars --provider anthropic --model claude-3-7-sonnet-latest --apiKey your-api-keyCitation
If you find the app and the paper and code useful in your research, please consider giving a star ⭐ and citation.
@article{qin2025ui,
title={UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents},
author={Qin, Yujia and Ye, Yining and Fang, Junjie and Wang, Haoming and Liang, Shihao and Tian, Shizuo and Zhang, Junda and Li, Jiahao and Li, Yunxin and Huang, Shijue and others},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.12326},
year={2025}
}Final Thoughts
We have tested a lot of these tools at Medevel. usually, they are cool tech demos that fall apart in practice. TARS, with its focus on MCP integration and hybrid vision/DOM control, feels like the next step toward agents that can actually do work.
If you want to see the future of computer use, this is the repo to clone.
