🌐 pi-chrome-devtools — Chrome DevTools Tools for Pi Agents

@narumitw/pi-chrome-devtools is a native Pi coding agent extension that exposes Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) automation as Pi tools.

Use it to let the Pi agent inspect browser tabs, navigate pages, evaluate JavaScript, and capture screenshots while debugging web apps or validating UI behavior.

This package is inspired by chrome-devtools-mcp, but it is implemented as native Pi tools instead of an MCP server.

✨ Features

• Lists inspectable Chrome tabs and pages.
• Selects an active Chrome page for later tool calls.
• Navigates Chrome to a target URL, creating an inspectable page when none exists.
• Recovers from stale active page selections by falling back to an available page.
• Evaluates JavaScript in the selected page.
• Captures PNG screenshots, including optional full-page screenshots.
• Renders compact tool results that expand/collapse with Pi's default output toggle (Ctrl+O).
• Uses a local Chrome DevTools Protocol endpoint.
• Retries briefly while Chrome is starting and reports actionable endpoint errors.
• Shows statusline activity only while Chrome DevTools tools are running.
• Provides a /chrome-devtools menu with quick-start help and tool controls.
• Provides a Plan-mode-style selector for choosing individual Chrome DevTools tools.
• Persists the selected Chrome DevTools tools across Pi restarts.

📦 Install

pi install npm:@narumitw/pi-chrome-devtools

Try without installing permanently:

pi -e npm:@narumitw/pi-chrome-devtools

Try this package locally from the repository root:

pi -e ./extensions/pi-chrome-devtools

🚀 Start Chrome with CDP enabled

The extension connects to 127.0.0.1:9222 by default.

google-chrome --remote-debugging-port=9222 --user-data-dir=/tmp/pi-chrome-devtools

On macOS:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome \
  --remote-debugging-port=9222 \
  --user-data-dir=/tmp/pi-chrome-devtools

Override the endpoint if needed:

PI_CHROME_DEVTOOLS_HOST=127.0.0.1 PI_CHROME_DEVTOOLS_PORT=9223 pi -e ./extensions/pi-chrome-devtools

🛠️ Pi tools

• chrome_devtools_list_pages — list inspectable Chrome tabs/pages.
• chrome_devtools_select_page — select the active page for later tool calls.
• chrome_devtools_navigate — navigate a page to a URL; if no page exists, create one first.
• chrome_devtools_evaluate — evaluate JavaScript in the selected page.
• chrome_devtools_screenshot — capture a PNG screenshot.

💬 Command

/chrome-devtools

Opens a menu with quick-start help, command usage, tool status, controls for enabling or disabling all Chrome DevTools tools, and a selector for choosing individual tools.

Direct subcommands are also available:

/chrome-devtools help
/chrome-devtools quickstart
/chrome-devtools status
/chrome-devtools tools
/chrome-devtools toggle
/chrome-devtools enable
/chrome-devtools disable

• help shows command usage.
• quickstart shows the configured CDP endpoint and launch hint.
• status shows runtime tool state, persisted selection, settings file path, and active non-Chrome tool count.
• tools opens a Plan-mode-style selector for choosing individual chrome_devtools_* tools.
• toggle is an alias for tools.
• enable enables all chrome_devtools_* tools for future turns.
• disable disables all chrome_devtools_* tools for future turns. The slash command remains available.

The selected tool names are saved to:

${PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR:-~/.pi/agent}/pi-chrome-devtools-settings.json

When the file is missing or invalid, the extension preserves Pi's current active-tool policy instead of enabling tools by itself. A valid saved selection is restored on Pi startup and /reload.

🧠 Use cases

• Debug front-end applications with an AI coding agent.
• Verify DOM state after code changes.
• Capture screenshots for visual inspection.
• Drive local browser workflows without a separate MCP server.
• Combine with Pi coding tools for end-to-end web app fixes.

🗂️ Package layout

extensions/pi-chrome-devtools/
├── src/
│   └── chrome-devtools.ts
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
├── tsconfig.json
└── package.json

The package exposes its Pi extension through package.json:

{
  "pi": {
    "extensions": ["./src/chrome-devtools.ts"]
  }
}

🔎 Keywords

Pi extension, Pi coding agent, Chrome DevTools Protocol, CDP, browser automation, web debugging, JavaScript evaluation, screenshot automation, AI coding agent tools.

📄 License

MIT. See LICENSE.