| name | obscura-0-1-1 |
| description | Lightweight headless browser engine written in Rust for web scraping and AI agent automation. Runs JavaScript via V8, supports Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), and acts as a drop-in replacement for headless Chrome with Puppeteer and Playwright. Use when building scrapers, automating web interactions, replacing headless Chrome with lower memory footprint (~30 MB), or needing anti-detection capabilities. |
Obscura 0.1.1
Overview
Obscura is a headless browser engine written in Rust, built for web scraping and AI agent automation. It runs real JavaScript via V8 (through Deno Core), supports the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), and acts as a drop-in replacement for headless Chrome when used with Puppeteer and Playwright.
Designed for automation at scale rather than desktop browsing, Obscura achieves dramatic resource savings:
- Memory: ~30 MB vs 200+ MB for headless Chrome
- Binary size: ~70 MB vs 300+ MB
- Page load: 51–85 ms vs ~500–800 ms
- Startup: Instant vs ~2 seconds
- Anti-detection: Built-in (with
--stealth feature)
Single binary. No Chrome, no Node.js, no external dependencies.
Changes in 0.1.1
Patch release over 0.1.0 with three bug fixes:
- Load balancer no longer panics on unwrap;
/json/version round-robins through workers; dead workers return 502 instead of silent drops
--stealth flag actually takes effect in serve mode; log message reflects what's compiled in- Shadow DOM polyfill no longer throws TypeError on parentNode assignment (fixes Cloudflare Turnstile and similar)
When to Use
- Web scraping at scale with minimal memory footprint
- AI agent automation that needs real JavaScript execution
- Replacing headless Chrome in Puppeteer or Playwright workflows
