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Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

developer.chrome.com

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Re: Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

#61

Post by dawnerd »

defen wrote: post #48
dataviz1000 wrote: post #43

I use Playwright to intercept all requests and responses and have Claude Code navigate to a website like YouTube and click and interact with all the elements and inputs while recording all the requests and responses associated with each interaction. Then it creates a detailed strongly typed API to interact with any website using the underlying API. Yes, I know it likely breaks everybody's terms of service but at the…

Would this hypothetically be able to download arbitrary videos from youtube without the constant yt-dlp arms race?

Don’t know how this could be more stable than ytdlp. When issues come up they’re fixed really quickly.

Re: Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

#62

Post by Sonofg0tham »

rzmmm wrote: post #20
simianwords wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI

Yes. Can someone tell me why even HN has bots. For selling upvotes to advertisement purposes?

I'm not a bot and definitely not advertising - I'm new on HN and trying to contribute with a few comments where I can.

Re: Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

#63

Post by zzleeper »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #49
xrd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, please do!

100% I'll response to this by Friday with link to Github. I use Patchright + Ghostery and I have a cleaver tool that uses web sockets to pass 1 second interval screenshots to the a dashboard and pointer / keyboard events to the server which allow interacting with websites so that a user can create authentication that is stored in the chrome user profile with all the cookies, history, local storage, ect.. in the cloud…

Another +1, it would be incredibly useful to play with this approach! (and fun)

Re: Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

#65

Post by nerdsniper »

mmaunder wrote: post #41
rossvc wrote: post #35

I've been using the DevTools MCP for months now, but it's extremely token heavy. Is there an alternative that provides the same amount of detail when it comes to reading back network requests?

Yes. CLI. Always CLI. Never MCP. Ever. You’re welcome.

That doesn't solve the issue here because the amount of data in the browser state dwarfs the MCP overhead.

Re: Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

#66

Post by cheema33 »

mmaunder wrote: post #40

Google is so far behind agentic cli coding. Gemini CLI is awful. So bad in fact that it’s clear none of their team use it. Also MCP is very obviously dead, as any of us doing heavy agentic coding know. Why permanently sacrifice that chunk of your context window when you can just use CLI tools which are also faster and more flexible and many are already trained in. Playwright with headless Chromium or headed chrome is…

> Also MCP is very obviously dead

Some people will push back on this. They are holding out hope that the recent improvements Anthropic has made in this regard have improved the context rot problem with MCP. Anthropic's changes improve things a little. But it is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. It helps, but not much.

The reason MCP is dying/dead is because MCP servers, once configured, bloat up context even when they are not being used. Why would anybody want that?

Use agent skills. And say goodbye to MCP. We need to move on from MCP.

Re: Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

#67

Post by cheema33 »

commanderkeen08 wrote: post #51
paulirish wrote: post #47

The DevTools MCP project just recently landed a standalone CLI: https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp/blob/m... Great news to all of us keenly aware of MCP's wild token costs. ;) The CLI hasn't been announced yet (sorry guys!), but it is shipping in the latest v0.20.0 release. (Disclaimer: I used to work on the DevTools team. And I still do, too)

MCPs cost nothing in CC now with Tool Search.

> MCPs cost nothing in CC now with Tool Search.

This is incorrect. Plenty of people have run the numbers. Tool search does not fix all problems with MCP.

Re: Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

#68

Post by xmorse »

aadishv wrote: post #2

Someone already made a great agent skill for this, which I'm using daily, and it's been very cool! https://github.com/pasky/chrome-cdp-skill For example, I use codex to manage a local music library, and it was able to use the skill to open a YT Music tab in my browser, search for each album, and get the URL to pass to yt-dlp. Do note that it only works for Chrome browsers rn, so you have to edit the script to point t…

Does anyone really use these hacked up with duct tape skills? why not use something more reliable like playwriter.dev?

Re: Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

#69

Post by DimitriBouriez »

rossvc wrote: post #35

I've been using the DevTools MCP for months now, but it's extremely token heavy. Is there an alternative that provides the same amount of detail when it comes to reading back network requests?

i'm experimenting with a different approach (no CDP/ARIA trees, just Chrome extension messaging that returns a numbered list of interactive elements). Way lighter on tokens and undetectable but still very experimental : https://github.com/DimitriBouriez/navagent-mcp

Re: Chrome DevTools MCP (2025)

#70

Post by sega_sai »

mmaunder wrote: post #40

Google is so far behind agentic cli coding. Gemini CLI is awful. So bad in fact that it’s clear none of their team use it. Also MCP is very obviously dead, as any of us doing heavy agentic coding know. Why permanently sacrifice that chunk of your context window when you can just use CLI tools which are also faster and more flexible and many are already trained in. Playwright with headless Chromium or headed chrome is…

I don't know if this just anecdotal random impression, but in a last week or two I had mostly good experience with Google cli. While previously I constantly complained about it. I have been using it together with codex, and I would not say that one is much better than another.

It is hard to say nowadays, when things change so quickly

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