camoufox

Camoufox Browser Automation

Camoufox is a privacy-focused Firefox exposed through the camoufox-mcp-server MCP server. Reach for it when a plain HTTP fetch is not enough: JavaScript-rendered pages, bot walls, forms, multi-step flows, screenshots, or anything that benefits from a realistic browser fingerprint.

Every tool launches or reuses a real browser, so each call costs time and tokens. The whole skill is about getting the answer in the fewest, narrowest calls. Two habits do most of the work:

1. Pick the narrowest tool for the question (see Choosing a Tool). A page's link list, headings, or one text match is far cheaper than its full rendered text.
2. Bound every call. Set maxChars, selector, or outputMode: "metadata" so a giant page can't blow up your context.

This skill does not start the server. Confirm an MCP server named camoufox is available first. The installable plugin ships this config with unsafe browser options enabled so hard-site tuning can use firefox_user_prefs, args, and exclude_addons:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "camoufox": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "camoufox-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": { "CAMOUFOX_MCP_ALLOW_UNSAFE_OPTIONS": "1" }
    }
  }
}

Bare npx -y camoufox-mcp-server@latest remains safe by default unless the host config adds that env var.

On a fresh machine the first browse needs the Camoufox binary (~780MB), which npx installs do not prefetch. If a call returns Camoufox browser binary not installed. Run: npx -y [email protected] fetch, run that one-time command (it lands in the shared OS cache; do not omit the version pin) and retry.

Bring the Server Up (operator / local checkout)

npx camoufox-mcp-server@latest self-installs, but a local checkout or a first run needs the browser binary fetched and a preflight before you trust it:

npm install            # Node >=22 required
npm run build          # compile dist/
npm run fetch:camoufox # download the Camoufox browser binary
npm run doctor         # preflight: pins, cached binary, live browse smoke test