Agent Browser Workspace

Local deep research + browser use for any agent.
Run everything on your machine with a real Chrome profile (CDP) — no Docker, no remote browsers, no platform lock-in.

This repo is a small, production-ready toolkit for agent-driven browsing and reproducible deep research: control Chrome, extract content/forms, save pages to Markdown (with images), and automate Google Search — all as CLI scripts and Node.js APIs.

“Local-first” here means: your browsing session lives in an isolated Chrome profile on your computer.

CLI-first. For agent tasks, prefer running the existing tools via CLI (node scripts/..., node utils/...). Avoid writing new JavaScript scripts; only do it as a last resort when the CLI tools cannot perform a required step.

Why it competes

• Local-first browser automation: real Google Chrome + isolated profile (AgentProfile) + CDP.
• Extensible by design: add/maintain site-specific selectors & controls via scripts/sites/*.json (no hardcoding in prompts or code).
• Reproducible deep research workflow: stable SERP snapshots (links.json), downloaded sources in Markdown, and a disciplined research loop.
• Cost-efficient deep research: strong DeepResearch Bench results with a much cheaper model tier.

Features

• Browser control (low level): utils/browserUse.js
  • launchCDP (recommended), launch (persistent), connectCDP
  • navigation, clicks, form fill, scrolling (incl. infinite scroll), screenshots
  • download images/files, evaluate JS, basic network tools
  • PDF auto-handling: extract text even when Chrome PDF extensions intercept navigation
• HTML → structured data (no browser): utils/getDataFromText.js
  • extract navigation blocks, main content blocks (with Markdown), and forms (classified)
• High-level scripts (CLI + API):
  • scripts/getContent.js — save current/target page to Markdown + download images + rewrite links
  • scripts/getForms.js — detect forms and generate ready-to-use CSS selectors for fields
  • scripts/getAll.js — content + forms in one call (single HTML snapshot)
  • scripts/googleSearch.js — step-by-step Google Search: search → collect links → open → extract → paginate
• Site profiles (scripts/sites/*.json)
  • central place to maintain selectors and “controls” (actionable UI elements)
  • scripts return a site field so an agent can reuse selectors without guessing

DeepResearch Bench results (cost-efficient)

We use DeepResearch Bench (DRB) as the main external benchmark for deep research agents (official site, repo, leaderboard).

As measured on DRB (RACE overall), the reference points are:

System	DRB overall
Gemini-2.5-Pro Deep Research	48.88
OpenAI Deep Research	46.98
Agent Browser Workspace (this repo)	44.37 (submission pending review)
Perplexity Deep Research	42.25

Important context:

• Our 44.37 result was produced using Claude Haiku 4.5 (significantly cheaper than frontier “deep research” stacks) and a Cursor-based agent. Results were submitted to the leaderboard and are currently under review.
• Claude Haiku 4.5 is designed for low-latency, cost-effective agentic workloads (see Anthropic announcement).

Install (local)

Requirements

• Node.js 18+ (20+ recommended)
• Google Chrome (desktop)

Setup

npm install
npx playwright install chrome

Start/stop background Chrome (recommended)

npm run chrome

Stop:

npm run chrome:stop

For full setup details (profiles, Windows shortcut, verification), see INSTALLATION.md.

Quickstart (CLI)

1) Save a page to Markdown (with images)

node scripts/getContent.js --url https://example.com --dir ./output --name page.md

2) Extract content + forms in one pass

node scripts/getAll.js --url https://example.com --dir ./output --name page.md --forms-output ./output/forms.json

3) Deep research loop via Google Search

# Save a stable SERP snapshot (links.json)
node scripts/googleSearch.js "playwright tutorial" --links --dir ./archive/my-research

# Open a result and save content
node scripts/googleSearch.js "playwright tutorial" --open 0 --dir ./archive/my-research --name article.md

links.json is intentionally stable: you can resume research later without re-running Google Search.

Usage (advanced: Node.js API)

The Node.js API exists primarily for authoring/extending tools. For normal tasks, prefer the CLI quickstart above.

• Low-level browser control: see utils/browserUse.md
• Google Search + content extraction: see scripts/googleSearch.md

Extending: add a site profile

Site profiles live in scripts/sites/*.json. A profile can define:

• scraping.selectors — named selectors used by scripts
• controls.items — “UI controls” (selectorKey + human-readable actions) that scripts expose back as site.controls

Minimal example:

{
  "id": "my-site",
  "name": "My Site",
  "hosts": ["example.com", "www.example.com"],
  "scraping": {
    "selectors": {
      "searchInput": "input[name=\"q\"]"
    }
  },
  "controls": {
    "items": [
      {
        "name": "Search input",
        "selectorKey": "searchInput",
        "description": "Main search field",
        "actions": ["fill", "press:Enter"]
      }
    ]
  }
}

When the page host matches a profile, scripts (getContent, getForms, getAll) return: site: { id, name, host, controls[] } — so your agent can act on the page without guessing selectors.

Important: single-threaded browser access

Chrome/profile is a shared resource. Use browser tasks sequentially, from a single agent/process at a time.
Parallelize only non-browser work (e.g., parsing raw HTML via getDataFromText).

Docs

• AGENT_BROWSER.md — tools overview, usage rules, escalation strategy for JS-heavy pages, PDF handling
• INSTALLATION.md — setup, Chrome profile, QoL shortcuts
• RESEARCH.md — deep research methodology (artifacts, phases, quality checklist)
• scripts/ — high-level scripts documentation:
  • getContent
  • getForms
  • getAll
  • googleSearch
• utils/ — low-level utilities documentation:
  • browserUse
  • getDataFromText

Contributing

PRs are welcome — especially:

• new/updated site profiles in scripts/sites/
• extractor improvements for tricky pages (SPA, lazy-load, paywalls/overlays)
• better heuristics for form classification and content block selection

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.