/agent-browser

name: agent-browser
description: Agent-browser usage guide. Read this before running any agent-browser commands. Covers the snapshot-and-ref workflow, navigating pages, interacting with elements (click, fill, type, select), extracting text and data, taking screenshots, managing tabs, handling forms and auth, waiting for content, running multiple browser sessions in parallel, and troubleshooting common failures. Use when the user asks to interact with a website, fill a form, click something, extract data, take a screenshot, log into a site, test a web app, or automate any browser task.
allowed-tools: Bash(agent-browser:*), Bash(npx agent-browser:*)
license: Apache-2.0

agent-browser core

Fast browser automation CLI for AI agents. Chrome/Chromium via CDP, no Playwright or Puppeteer dependency. Accessibility-tree snapshots with compact `@eN` refs let agents interact with pages in ~200-400 tokens instead of parsing raw HTML.

Most normal web tasks (navigate, read, click, fill, extract, screenshot) are covered here. Load a specialized skill when the task falls outside browser web pages — see [When to load another skill](#when-to-load-another-skill).

The core loop

agent-browser open <url>        # 1. Open a page
agent-browser snapshot -i       # 2. See what's on it (interactive elements only)
agent-browser click @e3         # 3. Act on refs from the snapshot
agent-browser snapshot -i       # 4. Re-snapshot after any page change

Refs (`@e1`, `@e2`, ...) are assigned fresh on every snapshot. They become **stale the moment the page changes** — after clicks that navigate, form submits, dynamic re-renders, dialog opens. Always re-snapshot before your next ref interaction.

Quickstart

# Install once
npm i -g agent-browser && agent-browser install

# Linux hosts can install required browser libraries too
agent-browser install --with-deps

# Take a screenshot of a page
agent-browser open https://example.com
agent-browser screenshot home.png
agent-browser close

# Search, click a result, and capture it
agent-browser open https://duckduckgo.com
agent-browser snapshot -i                      # find the search box ref
agent-browser fill @e1 "agent-browser cli"
agent-browser press Enter
agent-browser wait --load networkidle
agent-browser snapshot -i                      # refs now reflect results
agent-browser click @e5                        # click a result
agent-browser screenshot result.png

The browser stays running across commands so these feel like a single session. By default, an inactive daemon saves configured restore state, closes its headless browser, and exits after one hour; the next command starts it again. Without `--restore` or another restore key, shutdown discards transient browser state and open tabs. Dashboard mouse, keyboard, and touch input count as activity. Headed browsers, Safari and iOS WebDriver sessions, and user-attached browsers are exempt from the default; provider-owned cloud browsers are not. Use `--idle-timeout <time>` or `AGENT_BROWSER_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MS` to tune the timeout, and use `0` to disable it. Still run `agent-browser close` (or `close --all`) when you're done.

MCP integration

For tools that support Model Context Protocol servers, start the stdio server:

agent-browser mcp
agent-browser mcp --tools all
agent-browser mcp --tools core,network,react

Configure the MCP client to launch `agent-browser` with `["mcp"]`. The server defaults to MCP protocol 2025-11-25 and accepts older supported client protocol versions during initialization. The default tools profile is `core`, which keeps MCP context small for everyday browser automation. Use `--tools all` for the full typed CLI parity surface, or combine profiles with commas, such as `--tools core,network,react`. Profiles are `core`, `network`, `state`, `debug`, `tabs`, `react`, `mobile`, and `all`; the `debug` profile includes accessibility audits, plugin registry, and command.run tools. Each tool accepts typed arguments plus `extraArgs` for advanced CLI flags and exact CLI parity. The common `allowedDomains` array maps to `--allowed-domains` and activates the same WebRTC containment and launch-mode restrictions, while `idleTimeout` maps to `--idle-timeout`. Tool discovery is paginated and includes read-only/open-world annotations so modern MCP clients can load the large typed surface incrementally. Use the tool `session` argument or `AGENT_BROWSER_SESSION` to isolate browser sessions.

eve agent integration

For eve agents, mount the `@agent-browser/eve` extension instead of hand-writing browser tools. It adds namespaced tools such as `browser__navigate`, `browser__snapshot`, `browser__click`, `browser__fill`, `browser__find`, and `browser__screenshot`, all backed by agent-browser running inside the eve sandbox. The sandbox bootstrap helpers (`installAgentBrowser`, `agentBrowserRevalidationKey`) ship with the same package under `@agent-browser/eve/sandbox`, so `agent/sandbox.ts` needs no extra dependency.

Reading a page

agent-browser snapshot                    # full tree (verbose)
agent-browser snapshot -i                 # interactive elements only (preferred)
agent-browser snapshot -i -u              # include href urls on links
agent-browser snapshot -i -c              # compact (no empty structural nodes)
agent-browser snapshot -i -d 3            # cap depth at 3 levels
agent-browser snapshot -s "#main"         # scope to a CSS selector
agent-browser snapshot -i --json          # machine-readable output

Snapshot output looks like:

Page: Example - Log in
URL: https://example.com/login

@e1 [heading] "Log in"
@e2 [form]
  @e3 [input type="email"] placeholder="Email"
  @e4 [input type="password"] placeholder="Password"
  @e5 [button type="submit"] "Continue"
  @e6 [link] "Forgot password?"

For unstructured reading (no refs needed):

agent-browser read                         # read rendered active-tab DOM
agent-brows