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

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

#91

Post by asabla »

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #78
spmurrayzzz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just view it as a relative minor convenience, but it's not some game-changer IMO. The tool use / function calling thing far predates Anthropic releasing the MCP specification and it really wasn't that onerous to do before either. You could provide a json schema spec and tell the model to generate compliant json to pass to the API in question. MCP doesn't inherently solve any of the problems that come up in that sor…

It seems the benefit of MCP is for Anthropic to enlist the community in building integrations for Claude desktop, no? And if other vendors sign on to support MCP, then it becomes a self reinforcing cycle of adoption.

> And if other vendors sign on to support MCP, then it becomes a self reinforcing cycle of adoption

This is exactly what's happening now. A good portion of applications, frameworks and actors are starting to support it.

I've been reluctant on adopting MCP in applications until there was enough adoption.

However, depending on your use case it may also be too complex for your use case.

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

#92

Post by kmangutov »

spmurrayzzz wrote: post #25
amendegree wrote: post #3

So is MCP the new RPA (Robotics Process Automation)? Like generic yahoo pipes?

I just view it as a relative minor convenience, but it's not some game-changer IMO. The tool use / function calling thing far predates Anthropic releasing the MCP specification and it really wasn't that onerous to do before either. You could provide a json schema spec and tell the model to generate compliant json to pass to the API in question. MCP doesn't inherently solve any of the problems that come up in that sor…

The interesting thing about MCP as a tool use protocol is the traction that it has garnered in terms of clients and servers supporting it.

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

#93

Post by mfkhalil »

andy_ppp wrote: post #85

When I go to a shopping website I want to be able to tell my browser "hey please go through all the sideboards on this list and filter out for the ones that are larger than 155cm and smaller than 100cm, prioritise the ones with dark wood and space for vinyl records which are 31.43cm tall" for example. Is there any browser that can do this yet as it seems extremely useful to be able to extract details from the page!

Hey, we’re working on MatterRank which is pretty similar to this but currently works on web search. (e.g. I want to prioritize results that talk about X and have Y bias and I want to deprioritize those that are trying to sell me something). Feel free to try it out at https://matterrank.ai

Would also be interested in hearing more about what you’re envisioning for your use case. Are you thinking a browser extension that acts on sites you’re already on, or some sort of shopping aggregator that lets you do this, or something else entirely?

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

#95

Post by jastuk »

StevenNunez wrote: post #94

I 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.

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...

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

#96

Post by bravura »

andy_ppp wrote: post #85

When I go to a shopping website I want to be able to tell my browser "hey please go through all the sideboards on this list and filter out for the ones that are larger than 155cm and smaller than 100cm, prioritise the ones with dark wood and space for vinyl records which are 31.43cm tall" for example. Is there any browser that can do this yet as it seems extremely useful to be able to extract details from the page!

When doing interior decoration, I am definitely interested in finding objects that fit very specific prompts.

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

#98

Post by rahimnathwani »

mkummer wrote: post #81
otherayden wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a rich UI like google sheets seems like a bad use case for such a general "browser automation" MCP server. Would be cool to see an MCP server like this, but with specific tools that let the LLM read and write to google sheets cells. I'm sure it would knock these tasks out of the park if it had a more specific abstraction instead of generally interacting with a webpage

Agreed, I'd been working on a Google Sheets specific MCP last week – just got it published here: https://github.com/mkummer225/google-sheets-mcp

This is cool. You should submit this as a 'Show HN'.

Also consider publishing it so people can use it without having to use git.

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

#99

Post by dalemhurley »

tempoponet wrote: post #84
SkyBelow wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think they might be looking for that could be detected pretty quickly? I'm wondering if it is something like they can track mouse movement and calculate when a mouse is moving too cleanly, so adding some more human like noise to the mouse movement can better bypass the system. Others have mentioned doing too many actions too fast, but what about potential timing between actions. Even if every click isn't…

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.

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

#100

Post by dalemhurley »

101008 wrote: post #31
mgraczyk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a developer tool

Then it should be limited to localhost or something similar.

What if you are using domain names for your local environment or a cloud environment like IDX or you want to automate the testing of the UAT environment?
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