@agntn/browsers

🌐 Eight vendors. One scrape call. JavaScript already ran.

Why?

Steel scrapes in one HTTP call. Kernel wants a live session first. Browserbase hands you CDP. A model will mix those three up, so this is one scrape() over eight backends.

✨ Features

• 🧩 Eight backends, one contract. Steel, Browserbase, Kernel, Browserless, Hyperbrowser, Anchor, Cloudflare and Playwright. Same objects on your side. Anchor still has no scrape.
• 🖥️ Playwright is local. No key. Chromium on the machine you already have.
• ⚡ Stateless where the vendor is. Steel, Browserbase, Browserless, Hyperbrowser, Cloudflare and Playwright scrape without you opening a session. Kernel will not.
• 📸 The extras follow the backend. PDFs, crawls, links, AI extract, search. Anchor will not scrape. Hyperbrowser will search.
• 🏷️ capabilities() is the list. Navigate is true on Kernel, Browserless and Playwright. False on Steel. Read the flag.
• 🤖 Five surfaces, eleven tools. CLI, library, MCP, Pi, OMP. They share the executors.
• 📏 Agent scrape and crawl have a ceiling. 20 000 characters unless you pass maxChars, 200 000 at most. A crawl shares it across pages.
• 🔐 Keys in a URL get scrubbed. Query params named token or api_key land in errors as [REDACTED].

📦 Install

pnpm add @agntn/browsers

Node.js 22 or newer.

🚀 First call

npx @agntn/browsers scrape https://example.com --provider playwright

ℹ Scraping via playwright...
Example Domain

This domain is for use in documentation examples without needing permission. Avoid use in operations.

Learn more

No key, no account. Playwright runs Chromium here. After pnpm add, that command is pnpm exec browsers, or install it once with pnpm add -g @agntn/browsers. Skip --provider and the first configured backend that can run the command wins. Steel if that key is set. Playwright if nothing else is. links on a Steel setup skips Steel, which has no links endpoint.

The scrape said "Learn more" and dropped the href. This did not:

browsers links https://example.com --provider playwright

https://iana.org/domains/example

Same page, different door. Who is even configured?

browsers providers

● steel           scrape screenshot(sess) sessions cdp
● browserbase     scrape sessions cdp
● kernel          scrape(sess) screenshot(sess) navigate evaluate sessions cdp
● browserless     scrape screenshot navigate evaluate sessions cdp pdf
● hyperbrowser    scrape screenshot sessions cdp crawl search extract
● anchor          screenshot(sess) sessions cdp
● cloudflare      scrape screenshot sessions cdp crawl pdf links extract
● playwright      scrape screenshot(sess) navigate evaluate sessions crawl pdf links

Filled dot means that key was in the env on this run. Playwright is always filled. A few more:

browsers scrape https://example.com --provider playwright --format html
browsers scrape https://example.com --provider playwright --waitFor h1
browsers scrape https://example.com --browser kitesurf
browsers screenshot https://example.com -o page.png
browsers pdf https://example.com -o page.pdf --provider playwright
browsers crawl https://example.com --maxPages 5 --provider playwright
browsers search "browser automation" --provider hyperbrowser
browsers extract https://example.com --prompt "Extract the heading"
browsers session create --provider kernel

search is Hyperbrowser. extract is Cloudflare or Hyperbrowser. The rest take -p when you do not want the default. --browser kitesurf picks Cloudflare and opts into Kitesurf. Leave it out and Cloudflare stays on Chromium.

Commands

Command	What it does	Example
scrape	Rendered page, markdown if it exists	browsers scrape https://example.com -p playwright
screenshot	Image to a file	browsers screenshot https://example.com -o page.png
crawl	Follow links, cap with --maxPages	browsers crawl https://example.com --maxPages 5
pdf	URL to a PDF file	browsers pdf https://example.com -o page.pdf
links	Unique hrefs	browsers links https://example.com -p playwright
search	Hyperbrowser web search	browsers search "browser automation"
extract	Structured extract with a prompt	browsers extract https://example.com --prompt "..."
session	create, list, release	browsers session create -p kernel
providers	Who is configured, what they can do	browsers providers
mcp	MCP server on stdio	browsers mcp

🧠 Library

import { create } from "@agntn/browsers";

const provider = await create("playwright");
const page = await provider.scrape("https://example.com");
console.log(page.markdown ?? page.text ?? page.html);

const caps = provider.capabilities();
console.log(caps.statelessScrape, caps.pdf, caps.cdp);

That's most of it, really. create("steel") if you have STEEL_API_KEY. resolveProvider() picks the first one that does. Want Kitesurf on Cloudflare? Use create("cloudflare", { browser: "kitesurf" }). Without that option it stays on Chromium. Kernel scrape wants a session object. The agent tools and the CLI scrape command open one and close it.

create() is async because that first call is where the provider module gets imported. Importing the package loads no provider and no HTTP client, providers() and has() answer from a manifest, and @agntn/browsers/providers/steel gives you one provider's factory directly.

🗺️ Providers

Provider	Auth	Capabilities
steel	STEEL_API_KEY	scrape, screenshot (session), sessions, CDP
browserbase	BROWSERBASE_API_KEY	scrape, sessions, CDP
kernel	KERNEL_API_KEY	scrape (session), screenshot (session), navigate, evaluate, sessions, CDP
browserless	BROWSERLESS_API_KEY	scrape, screenshot, navigate, evaluate, sessions, CDP, PDF
hyperbrowser	HYPERBROWSER_API_KEY	scrape, screenshot, sessions, CDP, crawl, search, extract
anchor	ANCHOR_API_KEY	screenshot (session), sessions, CDP
cloudflare	CF_API_TOKEN + CF_ACCOUNT_ID	scrape, screenshot, sessions, CDP, crawl, PDF, links, extract
playwright	none, local	scrape, screenshot (session), navigate, evaluate, sessions, crawl, PDF, links

Anchor does not scrape. The row stays, because someone will look for it. Cloudflare also accepts CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN and CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID.

🤖 Agents

browsers mcp
pi install git:github.com/agntn/browsers
omp install @agntn/browsers

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "browsers": { "command": "browsers", "args": ["mcp"] }
  }
}

Eleven tools, browsers_scrape through browsers_capabilities, the same eleven on MCP, Pi and OMP. Cloudflare calls backed by Browser Run take browser: "kitesurf". No provider needed then. They do not drive a session you already opened. browsers_screenshot hands the image back to the model. A full page too big for that goes to a file: pass path, and it refuses to overwrite one that exists. browsers_pdf always writes to path, under the same rule, since a PDF cannot go back to the model.

🚫 What this does not do

Need a fetch that is not a browser? @agntn/web. Need last year's page? @agntn/archives. Need to click through a login? Not this package. The tools never grew navigate or evaluate.

🧩 Adding a provider

Want a ninth? A class that implements BrowserProvider, an exported factory, a manifest entry in src/providers/index.ts and the name list in src/tool-contract.ts. Nonstandard env keys go in src/core/resolve.ts. Outside the package, register(name, defaultURL, factory) adds one at runtime.

🛠️ Development

pnpm install
pnpm lint         # builds first, then oxlint and oxfmt --check
pnpm lint:fix
pnpm typecheck    # tsc, then a build, then the extensions
pnpm test:run
pnpm build        # obuild

💛 Thanks

Work on this library ran through two OSS programs, Claude for Open Source and Codex for Open Source. Thank you <3

📄 License

MIT