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Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code

browsermcp.io

161–170 of 229 posts

Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code

#161

I don't see how an MCP can be useful for browsing the net and doing things like shopping as has been suggested. Large companies such as CloudFlare have spent millions on, and made a business from, bot detection and blocking. Do we suppose they will just create a backdoor to allow _some_ bots in? If they do that how long will it be before other bots impersonate them? It seems like a bit of a fad from my small mind. Su…

There are already plenty of services that provide residential proxies and captcha bypass pretty cheaply.

https://brightdata.com/pricing/web-unlocker https://2captcha.com/pricing

Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code

#164

So the website claims: "Avoids bot detection and CAPTCHAs by using your real browser fingerprint." Yeah, not really. I've used a similar system a few weeks back (one I wrote myself), having AI control my browser using my logged in session, and I started to get Captcha's during my human sessions in the browser and eventually I got blocked from a bunch of websites. Now that I've stopped using my browser session in that…

There's also the whole issue of captchas being in place because people cannot be trusted to behave appropriately with automation tools.

"Avoids bot detection and CAPTCHAs" - Sure asshole, but understand that's only in place because of people like you. If you truly need access to something, ask for an API, may you need to pay for it, maybe you don't. May you get it, maybe the site owner tells you to go pound sand and you should take that as you're behaviour and/or use case is not wanted.

Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code

#165
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the worst part is that it opens a pandora's box of potential exploits; https://elenacross7.medium.com/%EF%B8%8F-the-s-in-mcp-stands...

Most of these are not a real concern with remote servers with Oauth. If you install the PayPal MCP MCP server from im-deffo-not-hacking-you.com than https://mcp.paypal.com/sse its the same sec model as anything else online... The article also reeks of LLM ironically

it still is. if user has 1 bad tool, it's done!

https://invariantlabs.ai/blog/mcp-security-notification-tool...

Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code

#166
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do user agents doing work for users need to respect robots.txt? If yes, does chrome?

Any scraper is also a “user agent doing work for users”. Which ones should respect robots.tx?

Does the user agent fit the definition of a web crawler? If so, then observe robots.txt. This one does not, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler

Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code

#167

I don't see how an MCP can be useful for browsing the net and doing things like shopping as has been suggested. Large companies such as CloudFlare have spent millions on, and made a business from, bot detection and blocking. Do we suppose they will just create a backdoor to allow _some_ bots in? If they do that how long will it be before other bots impersonate them? It seems like a bit of a fad from my small mind. Su…

> Suppose it does become a thing, what then? We end up with an internet which is heavily optimised for bots (arguably it already is to an extent) and unusable for humans?

As opposed to the Web we now have, which is heavily optimized for... wasting human life.

What you're asking for, what "large companies such as CloudFlare have spent millions on", is verifying that on the other end of the connection is a web browser, and behind that web browser there is a human being that's being made to needlessly suffer and waste their limited lifespans, as they tediously work their way through the UI maze like a good little lab rat, watching ads at every turn of the corridor, while being constantly surveilled.

Or do you believe there is some other reason why you should care about whether you're interacting with a "human" (really: an user agent called "web browser") vs. "not human" (really: any other user agent)?

The relationship between the commercial web and its users is antagonistic - businesses make money through friction, by making it more difficult for users to accomplish their goals. That's why we never got the era of APIs and web automation for users. That's why we're dealing with tons of bespoke shitty SPAs instead of consistent interfaces - because no store wants to make it easy for you to comparison-shop, or skip their upsells, or efficiently search through the stock; no news service wants you to skip ads or make focused searches, etc.

As users, we've lost the battle for APIs and continue to be forced to use the "manual web" (with active cooperation of the browser vendors, too). MCP feels promising because we're in a moment in time, however brief, where LLMs can navigate the "manual web" for us, shielding us from all the malicious bullshit (ads, marketing copy, funneling, call to actions, confusing design, dark patterns, less dark patterns, the fact that your store is a bloated SPA instead of an endpoint for a generic database querying frontend, and so on) while remaining mostly impervious to it. This will not last long - the vendors de-facto ruling the web have every reason to shut it down (or turn it around and use LLMs against us). But for now, it works.

Adversarial interoperability is the name of the game. LLMs, especially combined with tool use (and right tools), make it much easier and much more accessible than ever before. For however brief a moment.

Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern captchas use a number of tools including many of the approaches you mentioned. This why you might sometimes see a CloudFlare "I am not a robot" checkbox that checks itself and moves along before you have much time to even react. It's looking at a number of signals to determine that you're probably human before you've even checked the box.

When I am using keyboard navigation, shortcuts and autofills, I seem to get mistaken for a bot a lot. These Captchas are really bad at detecting bots and really good at falsely labelling humans as bots.

Given the volume of bots they tend to be remarkably good at detecting bots

source: I work in a team that uses this kind of bot detection and yes, it works. And yes we do our best to keep false positives down

Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code

#169

What I don't like about LLMs is that people keep re-inventing the wheel over and over. For example, we've been able to control browsers using GPT for about 2 years now: - https://github.com/mayt/BrowserGPT - https://github.com/TaxyAI/browser-extension - https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use - https://github.com/Skyvern-AI/skyvern - https://github.com/m1guelpf/browser-agent - https://github.com/richardyc/Chrome-G…

Competitors don’t just challenge you, they push you to deliver your best work.

Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code

#170

So the website claims: "Avoids bot detection and CAPTCHAs by using your real browser fingerprint." Yeah, not really. I've used a similar system a few weeks back (one I wrote myself), having AI control my browser using my logged in session, and I started to get Captcha's during my human sessions in the browser and eventually I got blocked from a bunch of websites. Now that I've stopped using my browser session in that…

There's also the whole issue of captchas being in place because people cannot be trusted to behave appropriately with automation tools. "Avoids bot detection and CAPTCHAs" - Sure asshole, but understand that's only in place because of people like you. If you truly need access to something, ask for an API, may you need to pay for it, maybe you don't. May you get it, maybe the site owner tells you to go pound sand and…

Actually, the CAPTCHAs are in place mostly because of assholes like you abusing other assholes like you[0].

Most of the automated misbehavior is businesses doing it to other businesses - in many cases, it's direct competition, or a third party the competition outsources it to. Hell, your business is probably doing it to them too (ask the marketing agency you're outsourcing to).

> If you truly need access to something, ask for an API, may you need to pay for it, maybe you don't.

Like you'd give it to me when you know I want it to skip your ads, or plug it to some automation or a streamlined UI, so I don't have to waste minutes of my life navigating your bloated, dog-slow SPA? But no, can't have users be invisible in analytics and operate outside your carefully designed sales funnel.

> May you get it, maybe the site owner tells you to go pound sand and you should take that as you're behaviour and/or use case is not wanted.

Like they have a final say in this.

This is an evergreen discussion, and well-trodden ground. There is a reason the browser is also called "user agent"; there is a well-established separation between user's and server's zone of controls, so as a site owner, stop poking your nose where it doesn't belong.

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[0] - Not "you" 'mrweasel personally, but "you" the imaginary speaker of your second paragraph.

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