WebRider: Persona-Conditioned Agents for Live-Web Assistance

Current live-web agents are typically evaluated solely on their ability to complete a task and provide a final answer, often overlooking whether they adhere to the specific policy constraints or preferences delegated by the user. This can lead to situations where a task is completed, but the underlying policy is violated. WebRider addresses this critical gap by formalizing the delegated policy as an "intent contract." This intent contract is an operational record encompassing goals, constraints, evidence obligations, answer format, and task-local persona controls, which must be maintained throughout the web interaction. WebRider employs a hierarchical architecture: a top-layer controller manages the contract, a middle layer translates intentions into guarded executable actions, and a tool layer executes these actions using browser, search, and maps tools. A new benchmark, RiderBench, evaluates agents on 4,096 live-web contracts across 42 public websites, auditing both internal contract state and user experience for policy preservation and persona consistency.