browser

name	browser
description	Drive a real Chrome via the browsercontainer sidecar over MCP SSE. Use when a task needs a live browser — navigate, click, fill forms, screenshot, read the accessibility tree, run JavaScript in-page, or validate WebGPU/WebGL rendering. Canonical owner of the sidecar connection details the chrome-cdp / playwright / browser-automation skills reference.
version	2.0.0
triggers	["/browser","browse","web automation","scrape","navigate","screenshot"]

Browser Automation Skill

All browser automation runs on the external browsercontainer sidecar via chrome-devtools-mcp (40+ tools) over MCP SSE. No local browser is installed in the agentbox image.

Connection (canonical)

This is the canonical sidecar-connection block; the chrome-cdp, playwright, and browser-automation skills point here rather than restating it.

MCP SSE:  http://browsercontainer:8931/sse   (chrome-devtools-mcp)
CDP:      browsercontainer:9222              (raw Chrome DevTools Protocol)
VNC:      localhost:5903                     (visual debugging, Display :2)

Auto-registered at boot as browser-gpu in .mcp.json. Manual registration:

claude mcp add browser-gpu --transport sse http://browsercontainer:8931/sse

When To Use

• Page navigation, clicking, typing, form fills
• Screenshots and accessibility snapshots
• JavaScript evaluation in page context
• WebGPU/WebGL rendering validation
• Console log monitoring
• Multi-tab workflows
• Mermaid diagram rendering (via /render-mermaid HTTP endpoint; see mermaid-diagrams skill)

When Not To Use

• Fetching page content without interaction -- use web-summary or gemini-url-context
• API testing without a browser -- use curl or httpx
• Raw CDP protocol scripting -- use the chrome-cdp skill
• QE-grade typed assertions, visual-diff baselines -- use qe-browser

Key Tools

browser_snapshot (preferred for LLM interaction)

Returns an accessibility tree -- structured, deterministic, no vision model needed.

browser_take_screenshot

Capture viewport or full-page screenshot as PNG/JPEG.

browser_navigate

Navigate to a URL.

browser_click / browser_type / browser_fill_form

Interact with page elements.

browser_evaluate

Execute JavaScript in the page context.

browser_console_messages

Read browser console output.

Quick Start

browser_navigate({ url: "https://example.com" })
browser_snapshot()
browser_take_screenshot({ filename: "page.png", fullPage: true })

Sidecar Management

agentbox.sh browsercontainer up        # start
agentbox.sh browsercontainer health    # check all 5 services
agentbox.sh browsercontainer cdp       # list CDP tabs
agentbox.sh browsercontainer shell     # shell into container
agentbox.sh browsercontainer rebuild   # full rebuild

Health Check

curl -s http://browsercontainer:8931/health
curl -s http://browsercontainer:9222/json/list | jq '.[].url'

LaTeX and Diagram Workflows

Rendering Mermaid .mmd files (works around the broken Nix mmdc) and spot-checking compiled LaTeX/PDF pages via the sidecar are covered in references/latex-diagram-workflows.md.