Dev Browser

Brought to you by Do Browser.

dev-browser lets coding agents control Chrome with short JavaScript scripts. The browser stays open between calls, so an agent can navigate once, inspect the page, act, and verify the result without starting over each time.

Key features:

• Persistent pages. Named tabs carry state across scripts.
• Compact snapshots. Accessibility trees give agents readable output and stable element refs.
• Real Puppeteer. Scripts use the Puppeteer Page API plus a small set of agent-focused helpers.
• Launch or attach. Start an isolated Chrome profile or connect to a browser you already have open.

Demo

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c6cf7fb9-b1dc-46ed-93b9-6e7240990c53

CLI installation

npm install -g dev-browser
dev-browser install    # only needed if dev-browser cannot find Chrome

The release binary includes Bun and Puppeteer. Node is not required after installation. macOS and glibc Linux are supported; Windows and musl Linux are not yet supported.

Snap-packaged Chromium cannot read the default ~/.dev-browser/v1 directory. On Ubuntu, use dev-browser install or point DEV_BROWSER_CHROME at another Chrome binary.

If your package manager blocks lifecycle scripts, run npm rebuild -g dev-browser, pnpm approve-builds -g dev-browser, or bun pm -g trust dev-browser. The CLI will also try to download its binary on first use. For a private mirror, set DEV_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD_BASE; set DEV_BROWSER_SKIP_DOWNLOAD=1 if you install the binary yourself.

Quick start

# Launch a headless browser and run a script
dev-browser --headless <<'EOF'
const page = await browser.getPage("main");
await page.goto("https://example.com");
console.log(await page.title());
EOF

# Attach to Chrome started with `dev-browser chrome`
dev-browser chrome
dev-browser --connect <<'EOF'
console.log(await browser.listPages());
EOF

Chrome 136 and newer ignore remote-debugging flags on the default profile. dev-browser chrome handles this by using a dedicated profile and checking that Chrome actually started.

Using it with coding agents

Tell the agent to run dev-browser --help. The built-in guide covers the current API and the preferred look → act → verify workflow.

Agents that discover local skills can install the bundled skill explicitly:

dev-browser install-skill --codex   # ~/.codex/skills/dev-browser/SKILL.md
dev-browser install-skill --claude  # ~/.claude/skills/dev-browser/SKILL.md
dev-browser install-skill --agents  # ~/.agents/skills/dev-browser/SKILL.md

Run dev-browser install-skill without flags to update all three locations.

Idle browser cleanup

Launched browsers close after 30 minutes without a script by default. Change that per command, in the environment, or in ~/.dev-browser/v1/config.json:

dev-browser --idle-timeout 5m < script.js
DEV_BROWSER_IDLE_TIMEOUT=1h dev-browser -e 'await browser.listPages()'

{
  "idleTimeout": "5m"
}

Durations accept 30s, 5m, 1h, or raw milliseconds. Set the value to 0 to keep a launched browser open until dev-browser stop. Attached browsers are never closed by idle cleanup. Profiles, cookies, and login state remain on disk when a launched browser closes.

Allowing dev-browser in Claude Code without permission prompts