WebGPU is how the browser stops pretending it is only for DOM. You can run compute shaders, inference snippets, and visual work that used to mean a native app or a WASM-shaped apology.
That is exciting for creative tools and for on-device ML that should not round-trip. It is also a new way to melt a laptop and a new surface for complexity you now have to support.
The questions I ask before adopting it
- What is the CPU/WebGL/Canvas fallback when WebGPU is blocked by enterprise policy?
- Does this work belong on the user's GPU, or did we just not want to pay for a server?
- How do we test it in CI without a GPU farm fantasy?
A magazine site does not need WebGPU. A photo editor, a CAD viewer, or a local inference toy might. Match the API to the job.
What I will not do
- Ship a 20MB shader stack for a hover effect
- Assume mobile thermal limits are a desktop problem
- Treat "it works in Chrome Canary" as a browser matrix
The web platform getting real compute is good. The discipline is the same as any acceleration: measure, provide a fallback, and do not put the product on a path only 40% of users can walk.
Takeaways
- Use WebGPU for real compute and graphics, not decoration.
- Design the fallback first.
- Respect the device. The tab is not a datacenter.