macOS — must use full binary path (not `open -a`)

---

name: browser-cdp

description: >

Real Chrome browser automation via CDP Proxy — access pages with full user login state,

bypass anti-bot detection, perform interactive operations (click/fill/scroll), extract

dynamic JavaScript-rendered content, take screenshots.

Triggers (satisfy ANY one):

- Target URL is a search results page (Bing/Google/YouTube search)

- Static fetch (agent-reach/WebFetch) is blocked by anti-bot (captcha/intercept/empty)

- Need to read logged-in user's private content

- YouTube, Twitter/X, Xiaohongshu, WeChat public accounts, etc.

- Task involves "click", "fill form", "scroll", "drag"

- Need screenshot or dynamic-rendered page capture

metadata:

author: adapted from eze-is/web-access (MIT licensed)

version: "1.0.0"

---

What is browser-cdp?

browser-cdp connects directly to your local Chrome via Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), giving the AI agent:

Architecture

Chrome (remote-debugging-port=9222)
    ↓ CDP WebSocket
CDP Proxy (cdp-proxy.mjs) — HTTP API on localhost:3456
    ↓ HTTP REST
OpenClaw AI Agent

Setup

1. Start Chrome with debugging port

# macOS — must use full binary path (not `open -a`)
pkill -9 "Google Chrome"; sleep 2
"/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" \
  --remote-debugging-port=9222 \
  --user-data-dir=/tmp/chrome-debug-profile \
  --no-first-run &

Verify:

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:9222/json/version

2. Start CDP Proxy

node ~/.openclaw/skills/browser-cdp/scripts/cdp-proxy.mjs &
sleep 3
curl -s http://localhost:3456/health
# {"status":"ok","connected":true,"sessions":0,"chromePort":9222}

API Reference

# List all tabs
curl -s http://localhost:3456/targets

# Open URL in new tab
curl -s "http://localhost:3456/new?url=https://example.com"

# Execute JavaScript
curl -s -X POST "http://localhost:3456/eval?target=TARGET_ID" \
  -d 'document.title'

# JS click (fast, preferred)
curl -s -X POST "http://localhost:3456/click?target=TARGET_ID" \
  -d 'button.submit'

# Real mouse click
curl -s -X POST "http://localhost:3456/clickAt?target=TARGET_ID" \
  -d '.upload-btn'

# Screenshot
curl -s "http://localhost:3456/screenshot?target=TARGET_ID&file=/tmp/shot.png"

# Scroll (lazy loading)
curl -s "http://localhost:3456/scroll?target=TARGET_ID&direction=bottom"

# Navigate
curl -s "http://localhost:3456/navigate?target=TARGET_ID&url=https://..."

# Close tab
curl -s "http://localhost:3456/close?target=TARGET_ID"

Tool Selection: Three-Layer Strategy

| Scenario | Use | Reason |

|----------|------|------|

| Public pages (GitHub, Wikipedia, blogs) | `agent-reach` | Fast, low token, structured |

| **Search results** (Bing/Google/YouTube) | **`browser-cdp`** | agent-reach blocked |

| **Login-gated content** | **`browser-cdp`** | No cookies in agent-reach |

| JS-rendered pages | **`browser-cdp`** | Reads rendered DOM |

| Simple automation, isolated screenshots | `agent-browser` | No Chrome setup |

| Large-scale parallel scraping | `agent-reach` + parallel | browser-cdp gets rate-limited |

**Decision flow:**

Public content → agent-reach (fast, cheap)
Search results / blocked → browser-cdp
Still fails → agent-reach fallback + record in site-patterns

Known Limitations

Site Patterns & Usage Log

~/.openclaw/skills/browser-cdp/references/site-patterns/   # per-domain experience
~/.openclaw/skills/browser-cdp/references/usage-log.md    # per-use tracking

Origin

Adapted from [eze-is/web-access](https://github.com/eze-is/web-access) (MIT) for OpenClaw.

A bug in the original (`require()` in ES module, [reported here](https://github.com/eze-is/web-access/issues/10)) is fixed in this version.