Chrome CDP Live Browser Skill Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection Connect your AI agent to a live, already-running Chrome session — no fresh browser, no re-login, no automation framework. This skill uses Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) directly to interact with tabs you have open right now. What It Does Reads and interacts with authenticated pages (Gmail, GitHub, internal tools) without re-authenticating Takes screenshots of live tab state Evaluates JavaScript in page context Clicks elements , types text, navigates URLs Extracts accessibility trees and HTML for structured page analysis Maintains persistent daemon per tab — Chrome's "Allow debugging" prompt fires once, then stays silent Prerequisites Node.js 22+ Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Edge, or Vivaldi Remote debugging enabled in Chrome Installation Enable Remote Debugging in Chrome Navigate to chrome://inspect/#remote-debugging and toggle the switch. That's it — no flags, no restart needed. Install as a pi skill pi install git:github.com/pasky/chrome-cdp-skill@v1.0.1 For other agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Amp, etc.) Clone the repo and use the skills/chrome-cdp/ directory: git clone https://github.com/pasky/chrome-cdp-skill.git

Point your agent's skill loader at skills/chrome-cdp/

No npm install needed — zero runtime dependencies beyond Node.js 22+. Key Commands

List all open tabs with their targetIds

scripts/cdp.mjs list

Take a screenshot (saves to runtime dir)

scripts/cdp.mjs shot < target

Get accessibility tree (compact, semantic — best for understanding page structure)

scripts/cdp.mjs snap < target

Get full HTML or scoped to a CSS selector

scripts/cdp.mjs html < target

scripts/cdp.mjs html < target

".main-content"

Evaluate JavaScript in the page

scripts/cdp.mjs eval < target

"document.title" scripts/cdp.mjs eval < target

"window.location.href"

Navigate to a URL and wait for load

scripts/cdp.mjs nav < target

https://example.com

Click an element by CSS selector

scripts/cdp.mjs click < target

"button.submit"

Click at specific pixel coordinates

scripts/cdp.mjs clickxy < target

320 480

Type text at the currently focused element (works in cross-origin iframes)

scripts/cdp.mjs type < target

"hello world"

Get network resource timing

scripts/cdp.mjs net < target

Click "load more" repeatedly until selector disappears

scripts/cdp.mjs loadall < target

".load-more-btn"

Raw CDP command passthrough

scripts/cdp.mjs evalraw < target

Runtime.evaluate '{"expression":"1+1"}'

Open a new tab (triggers Allow prompt)

scripts/cdp.mjs open https://example.com

Stop daemon for a specific tab, or all daemons

scripts/cdp.mjs stop < target

scripts/cdp.mjs stop is a unique prefix of the targetId shown by list . Typical Agent Workflow 1. Discover open tabs scripts/cdp.mjs list

Output:

abc123 https://github.com/user/repo GitHub - user/repo

def456 https://mail.google.com Gmail

ghi789 https://app.internal.co Internal Dashboard

1. Inspect page structure

Accessibility tree is fastest for understanding layout

scripts/cdp.mjs snap abc123

Scoped HTML for a specific component

scripts/cdp.mjs html abc123 "#issue-list" 3. Extract data with JavaScript // Using eval to collect structured data from a live page scripts / cdp . mjs eval abc123 " JSON . stringify ( Array . from ( document . querySelectorAll ( '.issue-title' ) ) . map ( el => ( { title : el . textContent . trim ( ) , href : el . closest ( 'a' ) ?. href } ) ) ) " 4. Interact with the page

Fill a search box and submit

scripts/cdp.mjs click abc123 "input[name='q']" scripts/cdp.mjs type abc123 "my search query" scripts/cdp.mjs click abc123 "button[type='submit']"

Wait for navigation and check result

scripts/cdp.mjs snap abc123 5. Screenshot for visual verification scripts/cdp.mjs shot abc123

Saves PNG to runtime dir, path printed to stdout

Configuration Non-standard browser profile location If Chrome stores DevToolsActivePort in a non-default path: export CDP_PORT_FILE = "/path/to/your/chrome/profile/DevToolsActivePort" scripts/cdp.mjs list Default search locations (auto-detected): macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/ Linux: ~/.config/google-chrome/ , ~/.config/chromium/ , ~/.config/brave-browser/ Also checks Vivaldi, Edge, Canary variants Daemon lifecycle Daemons auto-exit after 20 minutes of inactivity . You can manually stop them: scripts/cdp.mjs stop

stop all

scripts/cdp.mjs stop abc123

stop one tab's daemon

Integration Patterns Reading a logged-in page (e.g. GitHub notifications)

No login needed — uses your existing session

TARGET

$( scripts/cdp.mjs list | grep github.com | awk '{print $1}' | head -1 ) scripts/cdp.mjs eval $TARGET " JSON.stringify( Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.notification-list-item')) .slice(0, 10) .map(n => n.querySelector('a')?.textContent?.trim()) ) " Scraping a page that requires infinite scroll

Click "load more" until the button disappears, then extract all content

scripts/cdp.mjs loadall abc123 "button.load-more" scripts/cdp.mjs html abc123 ".results-container" Running a multi-step form automation TARGET = abc123

Fill form fields

scripts/cdp.mjs click $TARGET "#first-name" scripts/cdp.mjs type $TARGET "Jane" scripts/cdp.mjs click $TARGET "#last-name" scripts/cdp.mjs type $TARGET "Smith"

Select a dropdown via JS

scripts/cdp.mjs eval $TARGET "document.querySelector('#country').value = 'US'"

Submit

scripts/cdp.mjs click $TARGET "button[type='submit']"

Verify result

scripts/cdp.mjs snap $TARGET Raw CDP for advanced use cases

Capture full page PDF

scripts/cdp.mjs evalraw abc123 Page.printToPDF '{}'

Get all cookies for the page

scripts/cdp.mjs evalraw abc123 Network.getCookies '{}'

Emulate mobile viewport

scripts/cdp.mjs evalraw abc123 Emulation.setDeviceMetricsOverride \ '{"width":375,"height":812,"deviceScaleFactor":3,"mobile":true}' Troubleshooting "Cannot connect to Chrome" / no output from list Confirm remote debugging is enabled: visit chrome://inspect/#remote-debugging Check that DevToolsActivePort exists: ls ~/Library/Application \ Support/Google/Chrome/DevToolsActivePort

macOS

ls ~/.config/google-chrome/DevToolsActivePort

Linux

Set CDP_PORT_FILE explicitly if using a non-standard profile "Allow debugging" prompt keeps appearing This prompt fires once per tab per daemon start . After the first command to a tab, the daemon persists and subsequent commands skip the prompt. If it keeps appearing, the daemon may be crashing — check for Node.js version ( node --version should be 22+). Timeout with many tabs open Unlike tools that re-enumerate all targets on every command, chrome-cdp targets tabs by prefix ID directly. If you see slowness, use a more specific target prefix to avoid ambiguity. Commands work but screenshot is blank The page may not have finished rendering. Chain an eval to wait: scripts/cdp.mjs eval abc123 " new Promise(r => { if (document.readyState === 'complete') r(); else window.addEventListener('load', r); }) " scripts/cdp.mjs shot abc123 Type command not working in iframes The type command is specifically designed to work across cross-origin iframes — make sure you're using type (not a click+eval workaround) for iframe inputs. How It Works Internally Reads DevToolsActivePort to find Chrome's debugging WebSocket port On first access to a , spawns a lightweight Node.js daemon that holds the WebSocket session open Commands communicate with the daemon via a local socket Daemons auto-clean after 20 minutes idle No Puppeteer, no intermediary — raw CDP messages only This architecture is why it handles 100+ open tabs reliably: target enumeration only touches the specific tab you address, not all tabs at once.