Browser MCP by Agent360

Your AI agent drives your real, logged-in Chrome - and works where headless tools die.

It is the browser you are already signed into. No login step to fail, no API key to wire up, no fresh profile that is a stranger to every account you have. Up to 20 agents at once, each in its own colour-coded tab group. 40 tools, MIT, runs on your machine.

→ What it can and cannot get past - every wall, marked measured, by design, not yet, or won't. Including the ones we have not fixed.

▶ Watch the 37-second demo with sound →

Browser MCP gives Claude Code (and any MCP client - Cursor, VS Code agent mode) control of your actual Chrome: your cookies, your sessions, your 2FA. So it works on CAPTCHA, 2FA and anti-bot sites where Playwright and Puppeteer get blocked - because it's you browsing.

The killer move: it hits a login wall, reads the verification code from your own Gmail tab, and continues the sign-in. No API can do that. Operate platforms with no API, QA your own web app end-to-end, or work dashboards, LinkedIn and Reddit at human pace - with you approving the sensitive steps.

40 tools. Auto-clicks the reCAPTCHA v2 checkbox, with a human fallback for the rest. Multi-session color-coded tab groups. MIT, free, and it runs on your machine - no account, no telemetry, nothing sent to us.

The whole thing, in four steps

1 - Install the Chrome extension. One click from the Chrome Web Store; Chrome keeps it updated. No store? See the unpacked install below.

2 - Add the MCP server. Paste this in a terminal. Required - the extension does nothing on its own:

claude mcp add --scope user browser-mcp -- npx @agent360/browser-mcp@latest

3 - Restart Claude Code. That is what starts the server. The extension shows no badge until step 4 - the server only takes a port the first time your agent actually uses the browser. A green badge with the number of connected agents appears then; nothing on the icon before that is normal. (The icon itself never changes colour - it is the badge that turns green.)

4 - Say this, to check it worked. Paste it to Claude Code:

Take a screenshot of my current Chrome tab.

You get an image back instead of "I don't have browser access". That's it - you're running. → What else to say

Using Cursor, VS Code, Codex or Windsurf? Same server, that client's own config - see browsermcp.dev/docs. Everything below is the long version.

The long version - install, step by step

Browser MCP is two halves and you need both: a Chrome extension (drives the browser) and a local MCP server (what your agent actually talks to). Installing only the extension - e.g. straight from the Chrome Web Store - leaves it stuck on "Not connected", because there is no server for it to reach. Chrome cannot install the server, and npm cannot install the extension. Hence two steps.

Step 1: Register the MCP server with Claude Code

claude mcp add --scope user browser-mcp -- npx @agent360/browser-mcp@latest

That is Claude Code's own MCP command, so the entry lands in the config Claude Code actually reads. --scope user makes it available in every project.

Want the extension files on disk for the unpacked install in Step 2? Also run:

npx @agent360/browser-mcp install

It copies the extension to ~/.browser-mcp/extension/ and prints that path in the terminal - copy it. (Use it for the extension files only; register the server with claude mcp add above.)

Step 2: Load the extension in Chrome

Chrome won't let extensions install themselves from npm - you load it manually one time. To update later, re-run the install command and reload it (see Keeping it updated). Prefer the Chrome Web Store install if you'd rather have the extension auto-update.

1. Open Chrome and type chrome://extensions in the address bar
2. Toggle "Developer mode" ON (top right corner)
3. Click "Load unpacked" (top left, next to "Pack extension")
4. Navigate to ~/.browser-mcp/extension/ and click "Select"
   • On Mac: Press Cmd+Shift+G in the file picker, paste ~/.browser-mcp/extension/, press Enter
   • On Windows: Paste %USERPROFILE%\.browser-mcp\extension\ in the address bar
   • On Linux: Type ~/.browser-mcp/extension/ in the path field
5. Restart Claude Code so it picks up the new MCP server

That's it. The Browser MCP icon will appear in your toolbar, and 40 browser tools are now available in Claude Code.

Alternative: Manual zip download (no npm)

If you don't want to use npm, download the extension directly:

1. Download the extension zip (agent360-browser-mcp-<version>.zip) from the latest GitHub release
2. Unzip the file (anywhere - e.g. ~/Downloads/browser-mcp-extension/)
3. Follow Step 2 above, but select the unzipped folder instead of ~/.browser-mcp/extension/
4. Register the server - run claude mcp add --scope user browser-mcp -- npx @agent360/browser-mcp@latest, or add this to ~/.claude.json by hand:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "browser-mcp": {
         "command": "npx",
         "args": ["@agent360/browser-mcp@latest"]
       }
     }
   }
   

Chrome Web Store (no Developer mode, auto-updating extension)

This replaces Step 2 only - you still need Step 1.

1. Install the extension from the Chrome Web Store → - no Developer mode toggle, and Chrome keeps it updated for you.
2. Register the MCP server:

   claude mcp add --scope user browser-mcp -- npx @agent360/browser-mcp@latest
   

   (For Cursor / VS Code / Codex, use that client's own MCP config instead - see browsermcp.dev/docs.)
3. Restart Claude Code.

Skip step 2 and the extension icon will sit on "Not connected" forever - that is the symptom of a missing MCP server, not a broken extension.

You're in. Now what?

Nothing happens until you ask, and the hardest part of a new tool is knowing what to ask for. Paste one of these to your agent:

Say this	What it shows
"Take a screenshot of my current Chrome tab."	Start here. An image back instead of "I don't have browser access" means both halves are talking. That is the whole install test.
"Open my Gmail tab and tell me who sent my last 3 emails."	The one that shows the difference - it works because it is your browser, already signed in. A headless tool hits a login wall here.
"Go to my analytics dashboard, pull this month's numbers, and put them in a table."	Any dashboard you are already logged into. No API key, no export, no integration to build first.
"Fill in this signup form with my details. Stop and ask me before anything sensitive."	You stay in the loop - it hands control back for passwords, payment details, or anything it should not decide alone.
"Log me in here. If it emails a code, read it from my Gmail tab and continue."	The move no API can make: it reads the one-time code out of your own inbox and finishes the sign-in.
"Walk through my app's signup flow as a real user and tell me where it breaks."	End-to-end QA of your own product, in the same browser your users have.

The pattern: anything you would do yourself in a browser, on a site you are already signed into. It is strongest where there is no API - internal dashboards, admin panels, portals, LinkedIn. Built something good? Add it to the gallery.

Why This Over Playwright MCP / BrowserMCP?

	Browser MCP	Playwright MCP	BrowserMCP.io
Browser	Your real Chrome, via extension	Persistent profile by default, or your Chrome via their extension	Your real Chrome
Maintained	Actively - latest release v1.29.1 (2026-09-13)	Actively (Microsoft)	Last commit Apr 2025
Logins/cookies	Your existing session	Persistent profile keeps logins between runs	Already authenticated
Several agents, one logged-in profile	20 concurrent, each with its own color-coded tab group	Their docs: concurrent clients on one profile conflict - each extra client needs --isolated or its own --user-data-dir	Single session
Human-in-the-loop	browser_ask_user - 2FA, CAPTCHA, credential input	None	None
Provider integrations	9 built-in (Stripe, HubSpot, Slack...)	None	None
CORS bypass	browser_fetch from extension background	N/A	Limited
Network monitoring	browser_wait_for_network via CDP	Built-in	None
CSP-strict sites	Chrome Debugger API throughout	Works (headless)	Limited
Custom dropdowns	Angular Material, React Select support	Works (headless)	Limited
Install	claude mcp add + extension from the Chrome Web Store	npx @playwright/mcp	Manual clone

The pages that defeat everything else

The reason this works where headless dies is not that it slips past anything. It is that there is nothing to slip past: it is your Chrome, your session, your consent. What is left is the hard part - pages that fight any automation because of how they are built.

Every release is gated on a flow test against a real Chrome that has to survive exactly those: all 40 tools are exercised, and the gate also checks that the extension Chrome is running is the one being released - not another copy with the same version number. The failures that do show up are honest ones: mouse events are not delivered to a tab that is not in front, and the tools say so instead of reporting success. What the test covers

• strict CSP - navigate, read, execute, wait and click all still work (falls back to the Chrome Debugger API when script injection is blocked)
• cross-origin iframes - seen into and reached inside
• shadow DOM - selectors reach through it
• controlled inputs - fill sticks in a React-style controlled field
• honesty checks - click refuses a 0×0 element instead of hitting (0,0), and says so when the page never took the event

Known limitation: working in a tab you are not looking at

In a tab you are not looking at, the agent can navigate, read, screenshot, run scripts, fill fields and click. Chrome does not deliver mouse and keyboard events to a tab that is not the visible one in its window, so key presses, hover, double-click, coordinate clicks and combobox typing fail with an error that says so, and the agent will then call browser_switch_tab, which brings that tab and its window in front of you.

Measured across 160 real sessions: that happens on roughly one call in forty, most often on Enter. Fully hands-off background work is planned for 1.30. Some of it cannot be solved at all: CSS :hover is a state the renderer owns and no script can fake it, a script-dispatched event is never isTrusted, elementFromPoint stops at a cross-origin iframe, and the text selection a real double-click makes is browser behaviour rather than an event.

That last group matters most. A tool that quietly reports success is worse than one that fails, because you build on the answer. Where we still fall short of it, it is written down: see #19.

Corrected 2026-09-07. This table used to say Playwright MCP was headless and made you log in every time. That was wrong, and it had been wrong for a while - Microsoft's own README documents a persistent profile as the default, plus a browser extension for using the Chrome you already have. The row that actually survives is the one above it, and it is their documented limitation, not our claim: "A persistent profile can only be used by one browser instance at a time, so concurrent MCP clients sharing the same workspace will conflict." If you run one agent, Playwright MCP will serve you well. The difference shows up when you run twenty against the same logged-in browser.

On the name: the similarly-named browsermcp.io (@browsermcp/mcp) is a different, unaffiliated project with no commits since April 2025. This is Browser MCP by Agent360 (@agent360/browser-mcp) - actively maintained. Full side-by-side →

Environment variables

Both are optional. Neither is needed for normal use.

Variable	Effect
BROWSER_MCP_CHECK_NPM=1	Makes browser_provide_feedback also compare this server against the latest version published on npm. Off by default, so the call stays fast and works offline.
BROWSER_MCP_EXTENSION_ID=<32-char id>	Pins the server to one specific Chrome extension. Use it when more than one copy of Browser MCP is loaded and you want a given session to always talk to the same one.

40 Tools

Navigation & Content

Tool	Description
browser_navigate	Navigate to URL (reuses tab, or new_tab=true)
browser_get_page_content	Get page text or HTML
browser_screenshot	Screenshot via Chrome Debugger (works even when tab isn't focused)
browser_execute_script	Run JavaScript in page context
browser_extract_list	Read every row of a long/virtualised list by scrolling its container until no new rows appear

Interaction

Tool	Description
browser_click	Click via CSS or text selector (text=Submit, button:text(Next))
browser_fill	Fill input fields (works on CSP-strict sites)
browser_press_key	Keyboard events (Enter, Tab, Escape, modifiers)
browser_scroll	Scroll to element or by pixels
browser_wait	Wait for element to appear
browser_hover	Hover for tooltips/dropdowns
browser_select_option	Native <select> + custom dropdowns (Angular Material, React Select)
browser_set_combobox	Autocomplete/combobox: type query → wait for filtered listbox → click option (multi-value chip support). Use when browser_select_option fails on lazy-rendered options
browser_set_date	Robust date inputs: tries native value-set → masked typing → calendar-picker navigation (MUI/AntD/react-datepicker/Lexical). Use when browser_fill fails on date fields
browser_dismiss_overlays	Bulk-dismiss popups/modals/tooltips/banners via aria-label/text/×-char heuristics. non_critical mode preserves dialogs with form data
browser_handle_dialog	Accept/dismiss native alert/confirm/prompt dialogs
browser_double_click	True double-click (two trusted press/release pairs)
browser_right_click	Right-click to open page-level context menus
browser_click_xy	Escape hatch: click at raw viewport coordinates (CSS pixels) with trusted mouse events
browser_reattach_debugger	Recovery: force-detach and re-attach the Chrome debugger on the current tab

Tabs & Frames

Tool	Description
browser_list_tabs	List session's tabs only
browser_switch_tab	Switch to tab by ID
browser_close_tab	Close tab (session-owned only)
browser_get_new_tab	Get most recently opened tab (OAuth popups)
browser_list_frames	List iframes on page
browser_select_frame	Execute JS in specific iframe

Data & Network

Tool	Description
browser_fetch	HTTP request from extension (bypasses CORS)
browser_wait_for_network	Wait for specific API call to complete
browser_extract_token	Navigate to provider dashboard + extract API token

CAPTCHA Solving

Tool	Description
browser_solve_captcha	Detect and solve CAPTCHAs. Auto-detects reCAPTCHA v2/v3, hCaptcha, Turnstile, FunCaptcha. Actions: detect, click_checkbox (auto-click, often passes when signed into Google), click_grid (AI vision guided), ask_human (fallback)

Human-in-the-Loop

Tool	Description
browser_ask_user	Show overlay dialog for 2FA, CAPTCHA, credentials, or any user input

Data

Tool	Description
browser_get_cookies	Get cookies for a site this session has open
browser_set_cookies	Set cookies for a domain
browser_get_local_storage	Read localStorage from page
browser_set_local_storage	Write localStorage values
browser_console_logs	Capture console.log/warn/error messages from page
browser_upload_file	Upload files to <input type="file"> via Chrome Debugger API (no dialog)
browser_drop_file	Upload via drop-zones: finds hidden <input type="file"> in target subtree/parent (up to 2 levels). Use when browser_upload_file fails because the zone has no visible input

Diagnostics & feedback

Tool	Description
browser_provide_feedback	Self-check + report in one call. Compares this server against the latest on npm, the connected extension against this server, and detects more than one Browser MCP extension connected at once - the three things that explain most "it just stopped working" moments. Returns a verdict (current / outdated / conflict / disconnected), concrete fix steps, and a pre-filled issue link for whatever is genuinely missing. Your agent calls it on its own whenever a tool blocks it
browser_about	Project info + pre-filled links to submit a wish, use-case, or bug

Multi-Session Support

Each Claude Code conversation gets its own MCP server on a unique port (9876-9895). The Chrome extension connects to all active servers simultaneously.

Need more than 20 at once? The range is a setting, not a hard limit, but both halves have to agree. Set BROWSER_MCP_MAX_PORT in every chat's MCP config, set bmcpPorte to the same range in the extension's storage, then reload the extension: it reads the range only when it starts. Change only the server side and chat 21 binds a port the extension never looks at, so the browser goes quiet in that chat with nothing to explain it. 100 is plenty; the hard cap is 200. Every extra port costs your browser one refused connection every two seconds, whether you use it or not, so do not widen it for fun.

Claude Session 1 ←(stdio)→ MCP :9876 ←(WS)→
Claude Session 2 ←(stdio)→ MCP :9877 ←(WS)→  Chrome Extension → Browser
Claude Session 3 ←(stdio)→ MCP :9878 ←(WS)→

• Session isolation - each session gets a color-coded Chrome Tab Group
• Tab ownership - sessions can only see and control their own tabs
• Auto-cleanup - processes exit when Claude Code closes the conversation
• Ports are taken on demand - a server binds its port on the first browser call, not at startup, and releases it 5 minutes after its last tab closes. A chat that never touches the browser never occupies a slot.

Running the agent on another machine

The extension only connects to 127.0.0.1, deliberately - it will not talk to a remote WebSocket. If your MCP gateway runs on a different box than your browser, forward the port range over SSH.

Recipe below contributed by @bkuri, who ran into exactly this and solved it. Linux + systemd; needs autossh locally and your public key already on the server:

# ~/.config/systemd/user/browser-mcp-tunnel.service
[Unit]
Description=SSH tunnel for browser-mcp WebSocket (ports 9876-9895)
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/autossh -M 0 -N \
  -o ServerAliveInterval=30 -o ServerAliveCountMax=3 \
  -o ExitOnForwardFailure=yes -o LogLevel=ERROR \
  $(for p in $(seq 9876 9895); do printf " -L %s:127.0.0.1:%s" "$p" "$p"; done) \
  server-name'
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5
Environment="AUTOSSH_GATETIME=0"

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Replace server-name, then systemctl --user enable --now browser-mcp-tunnel.service.

The original recipe listed ports 9876-9885 by hand - the range was ten back then. It is twenty now, so the loop above generates them instead of hard-coding a list that goes stale the next time the range changes.

Built-in Provider Integrations

browser_extract_token navigates to the provider's API settings page and guides token extraction:

Provider	Token Format	Dashboard
Stripe	sk_test_... / sk_live_...	stripe.com/apikeys
HubSpot	pat-...	app.hubspot.com
Slack	xoxb-...	api.slack.com/apps
Shopify	Admin API token	admin.shopify.com
Pipedrive	UUID	app.pipedrive.com
Calendly	JWT	calendly.com
Mailchimp	...-us1	admin.mailchimp.com
Google	OAuth Client	console.cloud.google.com
LinkedIn	Client ID/Secret	linkedin.com/developers

Architecture

extension/
  manifest.json       # Manifest V3
  background.js       # Service worker - Chrome API dispatcher, session tab groups
  offscreen.js        # Persistent WebSocket bridge (multi-port scanning)
  popup.html/js       # Status UI - sessions, tabs, action log

mcp-server/
  index.js            # MCP server (stdio) + WebSocket client
  tools.js            # 40 tool definitions
  bin/cli.js          # Install CLI

How It Works

1. Claude Code starts → spawns MCP server via stdio
2. MCP server binds to first available port (9876-9895)
3. Extension's offscreen document scans ports every 2s
4. WebSocket connection established
5. Commands flow: Claude Code → MCP → Extension → Chrome APIs
6. Process auto-exits when Claude Code closes (stdin detection)

Keeping it updated

Browser MCP has two parts, and they update independently - how the extension updates depends on how you installed it: