Quick Start

Two paths to your first result in 60 seconds.

Path A: Content Extraction (Advanced WebFetch Replacement)

Things WebFetch / curl can't fetch — JS-rendered pages, anti-bot blocks, geo-restricted content — handled in one command:

browser-act stealth-extract https://example.com

Returns the page in markdown. No browser to manage, no session to name, no cleanup required. Comes with JS rendering and anti-bot bypass, and each call is independent — multiple URLs can run in parallel.

# HTML output
browser-act stealth-extract https://example.com --content-type html

# Use a proxy for geo-restricted content
browser-act stealth-extract https://example.com --dynamic-proxy JP

# Save to file
browser-act stealth-extract https://example.com --output ./page.md

Use it for: protected content, batch data collection, information retrieval. See Anti-Blocking for details.

Path B: Full Browser Automation

For login flows, form filling, and click interactions — use sessions:

# 1. List available browsers
browser-act browser list

# 2. Open the browser to a target URL (starts a session)
browser-act --session my-task browser open <browser-id> https://example.com

# 3. See what interactive elements exist on the page
browser-act --session my-task state

# 4. Interact by element index
browser-act --session my-task click 4
browser-act --session my-task input 2 "hello@example.com"

# 5. Close when done
browser-act session close my-task

The Core Loop

Open → State → Interact → State → ... → Close

1. Open with browser open — starts a session
2. State with state — see indexed elements
3. Interact with click / input / select — by index
4. State again to confirm the result
5. Repeat until the task is done
6. Close with session close

Reading state Output

state is the agent's eyes. It returns the URL, title, and an indexed element tree:

url=https://example.com/login
title=Login

*[1]<div id=login-form />
  *[2]<input type=email placeholder=Email address />
  *[3]<input type=password placeholder=Password />
  *[4]<button id=submit />
    Sign In
  *[5]<a />
    Forgot password?

Each [N] is an interactive element. Operate it directly by index:

browser-act --session login input 2 "user@example.com"
browser-act --session login input 3 "password123"
browser-act --session login click 4

After the page changes, old indices are invalid — call state again for fresh ones.

Command Chaining

Chain consecutive operations that don't depend on intermediate output with &&, in a single call:

browser-act --session s1 input 2 "user" && \
browser-act --session s1 input 3 "pass" && \
browser-act --session s1 click 4

When you need to read intermediate output (e.g. check state before deciding what to click), run them separately.

Next Steps

To learn about	See
How to choose between the three browser modes	Browser Modes
How to defeat anti-scraping	Anti-Blocking
How a human takes over when stuck	Better Headless
How to run multiple tasks in parallel	Concurrency & Isolation
The full command list	Commands
Letting AI write your scrapers	Skill Forge