browser

name	browser
description	Use when automating browser interactions, web scraping, or E2E UI testing using AI-optimized abbreviated selectors and isolated multi-session contexts.
aliases	["browser-automation","web-automation","playwright","puppeteer","e2e"]
category	automation
tags	["browser","automation","web-scraping","e2e-testing","multi-session","abbreviated-refs"]
archetype	AGT-018
version	1.0.0

Browser Automation Skill

AI-optimized browser automation using abbreviated element refs (93% context reduction vs verbose XPath/CSS selectors) and isolated multi-session contexts for parallel, side-effect-free flows.

Trigger

Use this skill when:

• Automating multi-step web UI flows (login, checkout, dashboard drilldowns)
• Scraping structured content from JS-rendered pages
• Running E2E UI tests against a deployed or local web app
• Orchestrating multiple browser tabs or parallel sessions (A/B flows, multi-account checks)
• Capturing screenshots, PDFs, or intercepting network requests as part of a verification pipeline

If the task is a single unauthenticated HTTP GET, prefer a plain fetch/curl-style tool instead of launching a browser.

Abbreviated Ref System

Verbose selectors dominate browser-automation context windows. Each document.querySelector('button[data-testid="submit-btn"]') burns tokens on every reference. Abbreviated refs replace these with short stable IDs assigned at snapshot time.

How It Works

At session or page snapshot, the browser tool enumerates interactive elements and returns a mapping table:

Ref	Role	Label / Text	Selector (internal)
#b1	button	"Submit"	button[data-testid="submit-btn"]
#b2	button	"Cancel"	button.cancel-btn
#i1	input	"Email"	input[name="email"]
#i2	input	"Password"	input[name="password"]
#a1	link	"Forgot password"	a[href="/reset"]

The agent then operates in abbreviated-ref space:

click #b1
fill #i1 "[e-mail]"
fill #i2 "hunter2"
click #b1

Under the hood, the tool resolves #b1 → real selector and executes. This trades ~100-byte selectors for 3-char refs — a 93% context reduction on typical flows.

Ref Lifecycle

• Created at session init (first page load) and on every explicit snapshot call
• Stable across calls within the same page
• Expire on navigation, page reload, or DOM-mutating events (SPA route changes, modal open/close)
• Refreshed by calling snapshot again — the tool re-enumerates and returns a fresh map

Treat refs as scoped to the current DOM state. After any navigation or dynamic content load, re-snapshot before acting.

Multi-Session Isolation

Each browser session gets its own profile and browser context. Sessions share nothing — no cookies, no localStorage, no sessionStorage, no service workers, no cache.

Creating Isolated Contexts

session_a = browser.launch({ session_id: "login-variant-a" })
session_b = browser.launch({ session_id: "login-variant-b" })

Each session_id maps to a distinct persistent profile directory under ~/.evokore/browser-profiles/{session_id}/. Concurrent sessions are safe because they operate on separate Chromium/Playwright contexts.

What's Isolated

• Cookies (no cross-session auth bleed)
• LocalStorage / SessionStorage / IndexedDB
• HTTP cache
• Service workers
• Granted permissions (geolocation, notifications, clipboard)
• Downloaded files (per-session download dir)

Use Cases

• Parallel login testing — verify two different user roles simultaneously without logging one out
• A/B flow verification — hit the same URL with two different cookie states to confirm experiment bucketing
• Multi-tenant smoke tests — spin up N sessions for N tenants and assert tenant data isolation
• Clean-state E2E — guarantee each test run starts with zero cookies even after a crash

Common Patterns

Login Flow

browser.launch({ session_id: "acct-1" })
browser.goto("https://app.example.com/login")
browser.snapshot()          # returns ref map
browser.fill("#i1", "[e-mail]")
browser.fill("#i2", "hunter2")
browser.click("#b1")        # submit
browser.wait_for("networkidle")
browser.snapshot()          # new refs for logged-in DOM

Form Fill + Submit

browser.snapshot()
for field, value in form_data:
    browser.fill(field_ref, value)
browser.click(submit_ref)
browser.wait_for("networkidle")
assert browser.url().endsWith("/success")

Screenshot Capture

browser.goto("https://example.com/report")
browser.wait_for("networkidle")
browser.screenshot({ path: "report.png", full_page: true })

Network Request Interception

browser.on_request(pattern="**/api/**", handler=lambda req: log(req.url, req.method))
browser.on_response(pattern="**/api/users", handler=lambda res: capture_json(res))
browser.goto("https://app.example.com/dashboard")

Anti-Patterns

• Verbose selectors in agent output. Never write document.querySelector('div.foo > button[data-testid="x"]') when you have #b3. The abbreviated ref exists to stay out of your context window.
• Shared sessions for concurrent tests. Reusing one session_id across parallel flows corrupts cookies and causes race conditions. Spawn a new session per concurrent actor.
• Sleeping instead of waiting for network idle. sleep(3) is brittle and slow. Use wait_for("networkidle"), wait_for_selector(ref), or wait_for_url(pattern) so the flow adapts to real page timing.
• Holding refs across navigation. Refs expire on nav. Calling click #b1 after a route change will fail or, worse, click the wrong element. Re-snapshot after every navigation.
• Launching a new browser per step. Launch once per session; reuse the context across calls. Per-step launches destroy cookies and defeat multi-session isolation.

Integration with EVOKORE Fleet

Browser sessions are expensive (memory, startup time) and carry isolation requirements — a natural fit for fleet_spawn + claim_acquire.

Parallel Browser Agents

Use fleet_spawn to run N browser agents concurrently, each with its own session_id and its own claim_acquire lock on a shared resource (e.g., test user pool, tenant slot).

fleet_spawn({
  count: 4,
  task: "browser-login-smoke",
  per_agent_env: { BROWSER_SESSION_ID: "${agent_id}" }
})

Each spawned agent:

1. Calls claim_acquire({ resource: "test-user-pool" }) to reserve a distinct test account
2. Launches browser.launch({ session_id: process.env.BROWSER_SESSION_ID })
3. Runs the flow in its isolated context
4. Calls claim_release when done

Why This Pairing Works

• fleet_spawn provides the parallelism primitive
• claim_acquire prevents two agents from grabbing the same test account or tenant
• Browser per-session isolation prevents cookie/storage bleed between agents
• Together: safe N-way parallel E2E with zero shared state

Check fleet_status to monitor running browser agents and claim_list to see which resources are held.