pi-aia-browser

Full browser automation for pi: a persistent Playwright daemon with multi-tab support, screenshots, JS injection, user profiles, and cookies — as 16 browser_* tools.

Chromium is installed automatically on install (postinstall script). Playwright is a regular dependency, so everything works right after pi install.

Originally developed locally as the pi-browser extension; published as pi-aia-browser (the npm name pi-browser was already taken by a different, simpler package).

Install

pi install npm:pi-aia-browser

The postinstall script downloads Chromium (idempotent — skips if already present). If it fails (e.g. missing system libraries), run manually:

# inside the installed package dir, or:
npx playwright install chromium
# Linux servers often also need:
npx playwright install --with-deps chromium

Then restart pi or run /reload.

Tools

Tool	Purpose
browser_init	Start/ensure the browser daemon (auto-starts if not running)
browser_navigate	Go to a URL
browser_click	Click an element (CSS, text, XPath)
browser_type	Type into an input
browser_screenshot	Screenshot page/element
browser_dom	Inspect DOM (html/text/attributes/computed)
browser_js	Execute JavaScript in the page
browser_scroll	Scroll page/container
browser_wait	Wait for timeout/selector/navigation/network/condition
browser_tabs	List/switch/create/close tabs
browser_back / browser_forward	History navigation
browser_reload	Reload page
browser_cookies	Get/set/clear cookies
browser_diagnose	Daemon health, memory, page state
browser_close	Shut down the daemon

How it works

• Client extension (index.ts) — registers the tools, communicates with the daemon over a Unix socket (~/.pi/run/aia-browser.sock), auto-spawns the daemon on first use.
• Daemon (src/daemon.ts) — persistent Playwright process that survives pi restarts; manages browser contexts, tabs, profiles, screenshots, and auto-shuts down after 60 min idle.
• Profiles — saved sessions in ~/.pi/browser/profiles (login persistence, e.g. LinkedIn).
• Logs — ~/.pi/agent/logs/pi-aia-browser/daemon.log.

Use cases

• Testing web interfaces end-to-end (mandatory per the AIA ASF workflow — real user experience, not just curl)
• LinkedIn automation (posting, messaging, research)
• Any site that needs login/session persistence
• Debugging visual issues with screenshots

Development

npm install          # installs deps + Chromium (postinstall)
npm run check        # typecheck
npm run release patch|minor|major   # test → version → CHANGELOG → tag → push

License

MIT © Bruno Jakic, Ai Applied