core

chrome-use core

Fast browser automation CLI for AI agents. Chrome/Chromium via CDP, no Playwright or Puppeteer dependency. Accessibility-tree snapshots with compact @eN refs let agents interact with pages in ~200-400 tokens instead of parsing raw HTML.

Most normal web tasks (navigate, read, click, fill, extract, screenshot) are covered here. Load a specialized skill when the task falls outside browser web pages — see When to load another skill.

Hit a rough edge? Please report it. If a command surprised you — a confusing error, a stale @ref, an occluded click, a flaky wait, a missing feature, or anything that cost you extra turns — open a quick issue at https://github.com/leeguooooo/chrome-use/issues with the exact command and what happened vs. what you expected. Agent-filed friction reports are how this tool gets sharper; a 30-second issue is genuinely valuable.

(Failures are also auto-logged locally — run chrome-use friction to see what's been painful, by command/category/host. Local only, never uploaded; opt out with AGENT_BROWSER_NO_FRICTION_LOG=1.)

The core loop

chrome-use open <url>        # 1. Open a page
chrome-use snapshot -i       # 2. See what's on it (interactive elements only)
chrome-use click @e3         # 3. Act on refs from the snapshot
chrome-use snapshot -i       # 4. Re-snapshot after any page change

Refs (@e1, @e2, ...) are stable for the same backend DOM node across successive snapshots of one document, so inserting or removing a modal no longer renumbers every later control. Navigation and tab switches hard-reset the identity map. Re-snapshot after those boundaries, and whenever you need to discover newly rendered controls.

@refs self-heal across re-renders — you don't need to re-snapshot for every minor DOM churn. Each ref records a fingerprint (role + accessible name + ancestor path); if its node is gone when you use it, chrome-use automatically relocates to the matching element on the current page and proceeds. So after a React/Vue list re-render that keeps the same labels, click @e3 still hits the right element. If the element is genuinely gone, it refuses (loud error) rather than click the wrong node — it never silently mis-targets. Re-snapshot when you navigated, switched tabs, or need refs for newly created elements.