Show HN: Browser MCP – Automate your browser using Cursor, Claude, VS Code • Hacker News Board

The Puppeteer MCP server doesn't work well because it requires CSS selectors to interact with elements. It makes up CSS selectors rather than reading the page and generating working selectors.

The Playwright MCP server is great! Currently Browser MCP is largely an adaptation of the Playwright MCP server to use with your actual browser rather than creating a new one each time. This allows you to reuse your existing Chrome profile so that you don't need to log in to each service all over again and avoids bot detection which often triggers when using the fresh browser instances created by Playwright.

I also plan to add other useful tools (e.g. Browser MCP currently supports a tool to get the console logs which is useful for automated debugging) which will likely diverge from the Playwright MCP server features.

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

#7

Post by hannofcart » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #5

This is cool. I'm curious why you chose to use an extension, rather than getting the user to run Chrome with remote debugging turned on?

Not OP but I suspect it is because of this (mentioned on their page):

'Avoids bot detection and CAPTCHAs by using your real browser fingerprint.'

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

#8

Post by neilellis » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

Well done, just tested on Claude Desktop and it worked smoothly and a lot less clunky than playwright. This is the right direction to go in.

I don't know if you've done it already, but it would be great to pause automation when you detect a captcha on the page and then notify the user that the automation needs attention. Playwright keeps trying to plough through captchas.

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

#9

Post by tylergetsay » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

hannofcart wrote: post #7

rahimnathwani wrote: post #5

This is cool. I'm curious why you chose to use an extension, rather than getting the user to run Chrome with remote debugging turned on?

Not OP but I suspect it is because of this (mentioned on their page): 'Avoids bot detection and CAPTCHAs by using your real browser fingerprint.'

I don't think remote debugging by itself on a normal chrome profile is detectable

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

#10

Post by buttofthejoke » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

namuorg wrote: post #6

buttofthejoke wrote: post #4

Why use this over Puppeteer or Playwright extensions?

The Puppeteer MCP server doesn't work well because it requires CSS selectors to interact with elements. It makes up CSS selectors rather than reading the page and generating working selectors. The Playwright MCP server is great! Currently Browser MCP is largely an adaptation of the Playwright MCP server to use with your actual browser rather than creating a new one each time. This allows you to reuse your existing Ch…

Ooo, i like that. one of the most annoying points has been 'not sharing' the browser context. i'll def check it out