@steel-dev/pi

Official Steel cloud-browser tools for the Pi coding agent.

Install

Steel CLI authentication

If the Steel CLI is not already installed, install it first:

curl -fsS https://setup.steel.dev | sh

Then authenticate and install the Pi extension:

steel login
pi install npm:@steel-dev/pi

API key authentication

Create or copy an API key from app.steel.dev, then:

export STEEL_API_KEY="your-steel-api-key"
pi install npm:@steel-dev/pi

Then ask Pi to browse:

Open Hacker News, inspect the page, and tell me the top story.

For a one-off run:

pi -e npm:@steel-dev/pi

Browser tools

• Navigation: steel_navigate, steel_go_back, steel_get_url, steel_get_title
• Inspection: steel_snapshot, steel_scrape, steel_find_elements
• Interaction: steel_click, steel_type, steel_fill_form, steel_wait, steel_scroll
• Artifacts: steel_screenshot, steel_pdf
• Structured data: steel_extract
• Low-level input: steel_computer
• Lifecycle: steel_pin_session, steel_release_session

Start interactive workflows with steel_snapshot. It returns an ARIA tree that lets Pi target controls by accessible role and name instead of guessing CSS selectors.

Interaction tools accept exactly one target method:

{ "role": "button", "name": "Continue" }

{ "targetText": "Sign in" }

{ "selector": "[data-testid='submit']" }

Role/name targeting is preferred. CSS remains available for pages without useful accessibility metadata.

Sessions

The default mode is session: one Steel browser remains available across Pi prompts until Pi switches sessions, shuts down, or calls steel_release_session.

Set STEEL_SESSION_MODE to:

• session — persistent across prompts (default)
• agent — release after each agent run
• turn — release after each turn

steel_pin_session switches to persistent mode at runtime. steel_release_session closes the current browser and restores the configured default.

All creation failures attempt API cleanup, and every tracked session is released during Pi lifecycle cleanup.

Configuration

Requirements:

• Node.js 22.19 or newer
• A current Pi runtime with package extensions
• STEEL_API_KEY or Steel CLI authentication from steel login

Connection:

• STEEL_BASE_URL — override the API base URL
• STEEL_CONFIG_DIR — override Steel CLI configuration directory
• STEEL_BROWSER_API_URL, STEEL_LOCAL_API_URL, STEEL_API_URL — compatibility aliases

Session:

• STEEL_SESSION_MODE
• STEEL_SESSION_TIMEOUT_MS
• STEEL_SESSION_HEADLESS
• STEEL_SESSION_REGION
• STEEL_SESSION_PROFILE_ID
• STEEL_SESSION_PERSIST_PROFILE
• STEEL_SESSION_CREDENTIALS
• STEEL_SESSION_NAMESPACE

Proxy and CAPTCHA:

• STEEL_USE_PROXY, STEEL_PROXY_URL
• STEEL_SOLVE_CAPTCHA
• STEEL_CAPTCHA_MAX_RETRIES, STEEL_CAPTCHA_WAIT_MS, STEEL_CAPTCHA_POLL_INTERVAL_MS

Tools and artifacts:

• STEEL_TOOL_TIMEOUT_MS
• STEEL_NAVIGATE_RETRY_COUNT
• STEEL_SCRAPE_MAX_CHARS
• STEEL_ARTIFACT_DIR — defaults to ~/.cache/steel/pi

Scrapes are saved in full before inline output is truncated. Screenshot, PDF, computer-action image, and scrape results return absolute artifact paths.

Self-hosted API

Point the SDK at the API root. A trailing /v1 is accepted and normalized:

STEEL_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8080/v1 pi -e .

The extension prefers the session-scoped websocketUrl returned by session creation. It does not append the account API key when that URL already carries a connect token.

Local development

npm install
npm run check
pi --no-extensions -e .

Run the opt-in live test with Steel credentials:

STEEL_API_KEY=... npm run test:live

Package verification:

npm pack --dry-run

Migration and attribution

This package graduates the original @steel-experiments/pi-steel prototype into the official @steel-dev scope. It preserves the prototype’s tool names so existing prompts continue to work, while updating Pi dependencies, CDP authentication, cleanup, semantic targeting, artifacts, and tests.

The initial implementation derives from steel-experiments/pi-steel, with additional packaging and fresh-install lessons informed by the community-maintained @false00/pi-steel. See the repository history and license for attribution.