Automate Browser Tasks with xbrowser: A Developer's Guide to Web Automation

A developer created xbrowser, an open-source CLI tool that automates browser tasks like web searching, scraping, and crawling from the command line. The tool ships as a single npm package with a managed Chromium build, eliminating the need for separate browser downloads, WebDriver setup, or configuration files. xbrowser enables composable commands for real-world tasks such as searching multiple search engines without API keys and extracting structured content as markdown.

Browser automation has been stuck in a rut for years. The dominant tools — Selenium, Puppeteer, Playwright — are powerful, but they're built for testing, not for real-world task automation. You want to scrape a competitor's pricing page? Write a 40-line script. Need to search Google and Bing simultaneously and compare results? That's another script. Want to chain a login flow with a data extraction step? Now you're managing async state, waiting for selectors, and praying nothing times out. I've been writing browser automation code for years, and I kept running into the same friction: too much boilerplate for tasks that should take one command. That frustration led me to xbrowser https://xbrowser.dev , a CLI tool designed specifically for developers and AI agents who need to get things done in a browser without writing a full test suite every time. Let's be clear — Playwright and Selenium are excellent at what they do. If you're writing end-to-end tests for a web application, they're the right choice. But when your use case shifts from "test my app" to "interact with the web," the cracks start to show: What I wanted was something like curl but for interactive browser tasks — a single command that handles the complexity and gives me the result. xbrowser https://github.com/dyyz1993/xbrowser is an open-source MIT browser automation CLI that ships as a single npm package: npm i -g @dyyz1993/xbrowser That's the entire installation. No separate browser download, no WebDriver setup, no configuration files. It comes with a managed Chromium build that includes CDP fingerprint protection — meaning the sites you visit can't easily detect that you're running an automated browser. The tool is designed around composable commands that map to real-world tasks rather than low-level browser APIs. Let me walk through the core features. Searching the web from the command line shouldn't require an API key. xbrowser handles the browser interaction for you: Search Google xbrowser search "headless browser automation tools" --engine google --num 10 Search Bing xbrowser search "headless browser automation tools" --engine bing --num 10 Search Baidu for Chinese-language results xbrowser search "无头浏览器自动化工具" --engine baidu --num 10 Each command returns structured results with titles, URLs, and snippets. You can pipe them into jq for filtering, save them to a file, or feed them directly into an AI agent's context. This is particularly useful for competitive analysis. Want to see how your brand ranks across search engines? Compare your ranking position across engines xbrowser search "my product name" --engine google --num 30 | jq '.results | select .url | contains "myproduct.com" ' No API keys, no rate limits to manage, no OAuth flows. Just search and get results. The scrape command extracts clean, structured content from any URL: Get page content as markdown xbrowser scrape https://example.com/blog/my-article Crawl an entire site xbrowser crawl https://example.com --depth 3 --max-pages 100 Generate a URL sitemap xbrowser map https://example.com The scrape output is markdown by default, which means it's immediately usable — paste it into a document, feed it to an LLM, or parse it with standard text tools. crawl follows internal links and respects depth limits, giving you a complete content snapshot of a site. map produces a flat list of every reachable URL, which is invaluable for SEO audits. Here's a practical example — auditing your own site's internal link structure: Map all URLs on your site xbrowser map https://mysite.com sitemap.txt Find orphaned pages in sitemap but not linked from other pages cat sitemap.txt | while read url; do count=$ xbrowser scrape "$url" | grep -c "href=" echo "$url: $count links" done This is the feature that sets xbrowser apart. Instead of writing multi-step scripts, you chain operations in a single command: Navigate, interact, and extract xbrowser chain "goto https://news.ycombinator.com && click '.titleline a' && scrape" Complete login flow with data extraction xbrowser chain "goto https://app.example.com/login \ && fill ' email' 'user@example.com' \ && fill ' password' 'my-password' \ && click ' login-button' \ && wait ' dashboard' \ && scrape ' dashboard'" The chain syntax reads like natural language: go to this page, click this element, fill in that field, scrape the result. It mirrors how you'd describe the task to another person. For AI agent workflows, this is a game-changer. An agent can construct chain commands dynamically based on user intent: User: "Go to Hacker News, click the top story, and summarize it for me" Agent constructs: xbrowser chain "goto https://news.ycombinator.com && click '.titleline a:first-of-type' && scrape" No script generation, no debugging async code, no selector management. The agent just builds a chain string and executes it. xbrowser ships with 67+ plugins, and the SEO suite is particularly comprehensive: Analyze backlinks for a domain xbrowser seo backlinks --domain example.com Check on-page SEO factors xbrowser seo audit https://example.com/page Analyze search engine results for a keyword xbrowser search "target keyword" --engine google --num 30 --analyze The backlink plugin crawls referring domains, checks link status, and reports on link quality metrics. The audit plugin checks meta tags, heading structure, image alt text, and other on-page factors. For link-building workflows, you can combine search and scraping: Find guest post opportunities xbrowser search "write for us + web development" --engine google --num 20 | \ jq -r '.results .url' | \ while read url; do xbrowser scrape "$url" | grep -i "guidelines\|submit\|contribute" done Sometimes you need to automate a complex workflow that's hard to express as a chain. That's where recording comes in: Start recording opens a visible browser window xbrowser record my-workflow Do your thing — click around, fill forms, navigate Stop recording when done The workflow is saved as a replayable script Replay it headlessly xbrowser replay my-workflow --headless Record your workflow once in a visible browser, then replay it on a schedule or in CI. This is perfect for: Let me be straightforward about when to use what: | Feature | xbrowser | Playwright | Selenium | |---|---|---|---| Installation | npm i -g one step | npm install + browser download | npm install + WebDriver | CLI-first | Yes | No library-first | No library-first | Search helpers | Google/Bing/Baidu built-in | None | None | SEO plugins | 67+ built-in | None | None | Chain syntax | goto && click && scrape | Requires script | Requires script | Record/Replay | Built-in | Codegen code output | IDE plugins | Anti-detection | CDP fingerprint protection | Basic stealth plugins | External tools | Test framework | Not designed for this | Primary use case | Primary use case | The key distinction: xbrowser https://xbrowser.dev is for doing things on the web . Playwright and Selenium are for testing things on the web . Different goals, different tools. If you're building an AI agent that needs to browse the web, scrape data, perform SEO analysis, or automate repetitive browser tasks, xbrowser gives you composable commands that map directly to those tasks. If you're writing integration tests for your React app, stick with Playwright. npm i -g @dyyz1993/xbrowser xbrowser --help xbrowser search "hello world" --engine google Three commands and you're up and running. The full documentation, plugin directory, and API reference are available at xbrowser.dev https://xbrowser.dev . The source code is on GitHub https://github.com/dyyz1993/xbrowser under the MIT license. If you're building AI agents that interact with the web, or if you're tired of writing 50-line scripts for tasks that should take one command, give it a try. Contributions and plugin submissions are welcome. xbrowser is open source under the MIT license. Install with npm i -g @dyyz1993/xbrowser. Docs and examples at xbrowser.dev.