How does it compare to playwright mcp?
Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
181–190 of 229 posts
Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Its the same security model as NPM/left pad yep, but consumers still use electron apps? It's a novel attack method, but its not a novel attack surface
Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
#183Earlier 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...
That's not fault of MCP though, that's the fault of vendors peddling their MCPs while clinging to the SaaS model. Yes, MCP is a way to streamline giving LLMs ability to run arbitrary code on your machine, however indirectly. It's meant to be used on "your side of the airlock", where you trust the things that run. Obviously it's too powerful for it to be used with third-party tools you neither trust nor control; it's…
It's not blame, but it's a striking reality that needs to be kept at the forefront.
It introduces a substantial set of novel failure modes, like cross-tool shadowing, which aren't obvious to most folks. Making use of any externally developed tooling — even open source tools on internal architecture — requires more careful consideration and analysis than most would expect. Despite the warnings, there will certainly be major breaches on these lines.
Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
#184I 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…
> Do we suppose they will just create a backdoor to allow _some_ bots in?
That, and maybe they will as CF seem quite big on MCP.[0] Or people just bypass the bot detection. It's already not terribly difficult to do; people in the sneaker bot and ticket scalping communities have long had bypasses for all the major companies.
I mean, we can all imagine bad use-cases of bots, but there's also the pros: the internet wastes loads of human time. I still remember needing to browse marketplaces real estate listings with terrible search and notification functionality to find a flat... shudders. Unbelievable amount of hours wasted.
If fewer people are able to build bots that can index a larger number of sites and give better searching capabilities, for instance, where sites are unable to provide this, I'm personally all for it. For many sites, it's that they lack the in-house development expertise and probably they wouldn't even mind.
[0]: https://developers.cloudflare.com/agents/model-context-proto... etc
Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
#185I feel like I slept for a day and now MCPs are everywhere... I don't know what MCPs are and at this point I'm too afraid to ask.
It’s RPC specifically for an LLM. But yes it’s the new soup de jour trend sweeping the globe.
Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
#186So is MCP the new RPA (Robotics Process Automation)? Like generic yahoo pipes?
I would probably call it shipping containers for LLM tool integrations.
Containers are not a big deal when viewed in isolation. But when its common size/standard for all kinds of ships, cranes and trucks, it is a big deal then.
In that sense its more about gathering community around one way to do things.
In theory there are REST APIs and OpenAPI standard, but those were not made for LLMs but code. So you usually need some kind of friendly wrapper(like for candy) on top of REST API.
It really starts to feel like a a big deal when you work in integrating LLMs with tools.
Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
#187I 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…
Most thing that do this kind of fingerprinting bot detection aren't looking for a browser that's pretending to be a human, they're looking for other programs that are pretending to be a browser.
Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
#188[!warning!] 1) this projects' chrome extension sends detailed telemetry to posthog and amplitude: - https://storage.googleapis.com/cobrowser-images/telemetry.pn... - https://storage.googleapis.com/cobrowser-images/pings.png 2) this project includes source for the local mcp server, but not for its chrome extension, which is likely bundling https://github.com/ruifigueira/playwright-crx without attribution super suss
The only chrome extensions you should install are ones you can build yourself from source.
Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
#189What 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…
This is a bit disingenuous, no? None of these have actually taken off.
Re: Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code
#190[deleted]