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BytesAgain › Skills › BrowserOS CLI
🦀 ClawHub

BrowserOS CLI

by @shivammittal274

Use when a task requires interacting with a website beyond just reading it — clicking elements, filling forms, submitting data, navigating through multi-step...

Versionv0.2.1
Downloads354
Stars⭐ 1
#legal#health#productivity
TERMINAL
clawhub install browseros-cli

📖 About This Skill

name: browseros description: "Use when a task requires interacting with a website beyond just reading it — clicking elements, filling forms, submitting data, navigating through multi-step flows, taking screenshots, or any workflow where the user needs a real browser with actions like click, type, scroll, or select. Also use for managing browser bookmarks, history, or tabs. Trigger whenever the user mentions browseros, browseros-cli, or BrowserOS. Do NOT use when simply fetching or reading page content would suffice — use curl, fetch, or WebFetch for that instead." allowed-tools: Bash(browseros-cli *)

Browser Automation with BrowserOS

Control a real Chromium browser via browseros-cli. Run commands via Bash. Use --json for structured output, -p to target specific tabs.

When NOT to Use

  • Headless scraping in CI/CD with no display — use Playwright or Puppeteer instead.
  • Static page fetching where curl/wget suffices.

    • Safety Defaults

  • Default to read-only first: snap, text, links, pages, ss.
  • Avoid eval unless no simpler command works.
  • Save screenshots/PDFs only to user-specified or workspace paths.
  • Close tabs when done: browseros-cli close .

    • Setup

    # Check if CLI is available
browseros-cli --version
    If not installed:
    
npm install -g browseros-cli
    If BrowserOS app is not installed:
    
browseros-cli install
    If BrowserOS is not running:
    
browseros-cli launch
    Configure connection:
    
browseros-cli init --auto
    Verify:
    
browseros-cli health

    Core Workflow: snap → act → re-snap

    Every interaction follows this loop:

    1. Open a page → get a page ID. 2. Snap → get element IDs like [10] textbox "Email", [15] button "Submit". 3. Act on elements by ID (fill 10 "text", click 15). 4. Re-snap after ANY click, navigation, or form submit — IDs change after DOM updates.

    Critical rules:

  • open = new tab. nav = navigate current tab.
  • NEVER reuse element IDs after navigation — always snap again.
  • Use text for content extraction, snap for interaction, ss for visual verification.

    • browseros-cli open https://example.com/login    # → Page ID: 5
browseros-cli snap -p 5                          # → [10] textbox "Email", [11] textbox "Password", [15] button "Sign In"
browseros-cli fill 10 "user@example.com"
browseros-cli fill 11 "password123"
browseros-cli click 15
browseros-cli snap -p 5                          # Re-snap! IDs have changed after submit
browseros-cli text -p 5                          # Read result page
browseros-cli close 5                            # Clean up

    Commands Quick Reference

    | Category | Key Commands | |----------|-------------| | Navigate | open , open --hidden, nav , back, forward, reload, pages, active, close [id] | | Observe | snap, snap -e, text, text --selector , text --links, text --viewport, links, ss -o , ss --full, eval "", dom, dom-search "", wait --text "" | | Input | click , click --double, fill "text", clear , key Enter, hover , focus , check , uncheck , select "val", scroll down [amt], drag --to , upload , dialog accept/dismiss | | Export | pdf , download

    | | Resources | window list/create/close/activate, bookmark list/search/create/remove/update/move, history recent/search/delete, group list/create/update/ungroup/close |

    Full flags and options: see references/cli-commands.md or run browseros-cli --help.

    Common Patterns

    Data extraction

    browseros-cli open https://example.com/data
browseros-cli text                         # full page as markdown
browseros-cli text --selector "table"      # scoped to element
browseros-cli text --links                 # include hyperlinks

    Multi-tab research

    browseros-cli open https://site-a.com      # → Page ID: 1
browseros-cli open https://site-b.com      # → Page ID: 2
browseros-cli text -p 1                    # extract from first
browseros-cli text -p 2                    # extract from second
browseros-cli close 1 && browseros-cli close 2

    Web app testing

    browseros-cli open http://localhost:3000
browseros-cli snap                         # get interactive elements
browseros-cli ss -o test-state.png         # visual snapshot
browseros-cli eval "document.querySelectorAll('.error').length"

    Common Mistakes

    | Mistake | Fix | |---------|-----| | Using CSS selectors (fill --selector "input[type=email]") | Always snap first, then use element IDs (fill 10 "text") | | Reusing element IDs after a click or navigation | IDs are invalidated by DOM changes — snap again | | Using eval to extract text | Use text or text --selector instead — lower tokens, structured output | | Forgetting to close tabs | Always close when done to avoid resource leaks | | Using nav when you want a new tab | nav replaces the current tab. Use open for a new tab | | Using open when you want to stay in the same tab | open creates a new tab. Use nav to navigate in place | | Taking screenshots for content extraction | Use text for content — screenshots burn tokens and need vision | | Using dialog --accept (flag syntax) | Correct syntax is dialog accept or dialog dismiss (positional arg) |

    Deep-Dive Documentation

    | Reference | Description | |-----------|-------------| | references/cli-commands.md | Full command reference with all flags |

    Links

  • BrowserOS
  • CLI Source
  • MCP Setup Guide
  • Skills Repository

    • ⚙️ Configuration

    # Check if CLI is available
browseros-cli --version
    If not installed:
    
npm install -g browseros-cli
    If BrowserOS app is not installed:
    
browseros-cli install
    If BrowserOS is not running:
    
browseros-cli launch
    Configure connection:
    
browseros-cli init --auto
    Verify:
    
browseros-cli health