Standalone Playwright CLI for agent browser automation. Launches a real Chromium instance with an agent-friendly API - structured commands for common actions, eval escape hatch for full power.
Homebrew:
brew tap detrin/tap
brew install browpip:
pip install brow-cli
playwright install chromiumAgent skill:
# For most agents (Cline, Cursor, Amp, Gemini CLI, etc.)
npx -y skills add detrin/brow
# For OpenCode (manual install)
git clone https://github.com/detrin/brow.git
ln -s "$(pwd)/brow/skills/brow" ~/.opencode/skills/brow # OpenCodeA real use case: use your Google account to search Maps in a city you've never visited, and extract structured results.
Open a headed browser with a persistent profile and sign in manually:
brow session new --profile personal --headed
brow navigate -s 1 "https://accounts.google.com"
# Sign in manually in the browser window...
brow session delete 1Your login is saved in ~/.brow/profiles/personal/ -you won't need to sign in again.
Paste this into Claude Code:
Open a brow session with my personal profile, go to Google Maps, and search for bars near Times Square in New York. Return the names, Google Maps URLs, ratings, and number of reviews in a markdown table.
Claude Code runs:
brow session new --profile personal --headed # → 1 (already logged in)
brow navigate -s 1 "https://www.google.com/maps/search/bars+near+Times+Square+New+York"
brow screenshot -s 1
brow eval -s 1 "
results = await page.evaluate('''() => {
const items = document.querySelectorAll('div.Nv2PK');
return Array.from(items).slice(0, 8).map(el => {
const name = el.querySelector('.fontHeadlineSmall, .qBF1Pd');
const rating = el.querySelector('.MW4etd');
const reviews = el.querySelector('.UY7F9');
const link = el.querySelector('a[href*=\"/maps/place\"]');
return {
name: name?.innerText || '',
rating: rating?.innerText || '',
reviews: reviews?.innerText.replace(/[()]/g, '') || '',
url: link?.href || ''
};
});
}''')
import json
result = json.dumps(results, indent=2)
"
brow session delete 1
| Bar | Rating | Reviews | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Riff Raff Club | 4.4 | 60 | Maps |
| Ascent Lounge | 4.4 | 646 | Maps |
| Jimmy's Corner | 4.6 | 2,195 | Maps |
| O'Donoghue's Times Square | 4.4 | 2,633 | Maps |
| The Dickens | 4.8 | 2,128 | Maps |
| The Woo Woo | 4.8 | 1,871 | Maps |
Because the google profile persists your login, you get personalized results -no cookie banners, no sign-in walls, just data.
16 fixture tasks, Claude Sonnet via AWS Bedrock. Compared against playwright-cli, MCP Playwright, agent-browser (Rust/CDP), and browser-use (full-stack agent framework).
16 fixture tasks, Claude Sonnet via AWS Bedrock. Compared against playwright-cli, MCP Playwright, agent-browser (Rust/CDP), and browser-use (full-stack agent framework).
| Metric | brow | agent-browser | browser-use | playwright-cli | MCP Playwright |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Success rate (16 tasks) | 88% (14/16) | 63% (10/16) | 63% (10/16) | 50% (8/16) | 44% (7/16) |
| Success rate (22 tasks) | 82% (18/22) | 64% (14/22) | 64% (14/22) | 55% (12/22) | 36% (8/22) |
| Avg tokens/task | 68K | 73K | 75K | 113K | 118K |
| Avg tool calls | 9.6 | 11.2 | 5.8 | 9.6 | 11.6 |
| Avg wall-clock | 41s | 36s | 73s | 44s | 50s |
| Est. cost/task | $0.22 | $0.23 | $0.27 | $0.35 | $0.37 |
brow leads on success rate across both the original 16-task fixture suite and a 22-task extended suite (adds pagination, cross-site comparison, graph traversal, and live web tasks). browser-use runs its own agent loop — included for completeness.
Per-task success grid, token breakdown, and analysis: benchmarks/README.md
brow daemon start [--port 19987]
brow daemon stop
brow daemon statusbrow session new [--profile <name>] [--headed]
brow session list
brow session delete <id>brow -s <id> navigate <url>
brow -s <id> wait <selector>
brow -s <id> wait --loadbrow -s <id> snapshot [--search <regex>] [--locator <selector>]
brow -s <id> screenshot [--full] [--path <file>]
brow -s <id> html [--locator <selector>] [--search <regex>]
brow -s <id> logs [--search <regex>] [--count <n>]
brow -s <id> urlbrow -s <id> click <selector>
brow -s <id> fill <selector> <value>
brow -s <id> type <text>
brow -s <id> key <key> # Enter, Tab, Meta+a
brow -s <id> hover <selector>
brow -s <id> scroll <pixels>
brow -s <id> scroll-to <selector>
brow -s <id> drag <from> <to>
brow -s <id> upload <selector> <filepath>brow -s <id> page list
brow -s <id> page new [url]
brow -s <id> page close [index]
brow -s <id> page switch <index>brow profile list
brow profile delete <name>
brow state save <name> -s <id>
brow state restore <name> -s <id>
brow state listbrow -s <id> eval <code>Variables available in eval: page, context, browser, state, pages.
Playwright selector syntax:
- CSS:
button.submit,#login - Text:
text=Login - Role:
role=button[name="Save"] - XPath:
xpath=//div
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Agent (Claude Code, script, etc.) │
│ │
│ brow session new --headed ← start browser │
│ brow navigate -s 1 "https://..." ← go to page │
│ brow snapshot -s 1 ← read page (a11y tree) │
│ brow click -s 1 "text=Login" ← interact │
│ brow fill -s 1 "#email" "me@..." ← fill form │
│ brow screenshot -s 1 ← capture screen │
│ brow eval -s 1 "await page..." ← escape hatch │
│ brow session delete 1 ← cleanup │
└──────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│ HTTP (localhost:19987)
▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ brow daemon (FastAPI + uvicorn) │
│ │
│ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────────────┐ │
│ │ Session 1 │ │ ProfileManager │ │
│ │ (browser) │ │ ~/.brow/profiles │ │
│ ├──────────┤ └──────────────────┘ │
│ │ Session 2 │ │
│ │ (browser) │ ┌──────────────────┐ │
│ └──────────┘ │ StateManager │ │
│ │ ~/.brow/states │ │
│ └──────────────────┘ │
└──────────────┬───────────────────────┘
│ CDP (Chrome DevTools Protocol)
▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Chromium (via Playwright) │
│ │
│ ┌────────┐ ┌────────┐ ┌────────┐ │
│ │ Page 1 │ │ Page 2 │ │ Page 3 │ │
│ └────────┘ └────────┘ └────────┘ │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
- Daemon auto-starts on first
browcommand - Persistent Chromium profiles for login session survival
- One browser per session, full isolation
- Headless by default,
--headedto watch
| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
BROW_HOME |
~/.brow |
Data directory |
BROW_PORT |
19987 |
Daemon port |
BROW_MAX_SESSIONS |
10 |
Max concurrent sessions |
~150-300MB per Chromium instance. 10 sessions = ~2-3GB.
MIT