First-party app
Browserless Browserless

Browserless

Render, scrape, search and crawl the web through Browserless's headless-browser REST APIs.

stable Developer ToolsAI & Machine LearningDocuments & Files

About

Browserless ships in the w6w first-party pack. It declares 16 actions, 3 health checks, and the host runs its code in a sandbox that never sees the credential.

App id
io.w6w.browserless
Version
0.1.0
Author
w6w
Licence
MIT
Categories
Developer Tools · AI & Machine Learning · Documents & Files

Overview

Browserless runs headless Chrome as a service. This app exposes its REST APIs to a workflow, authenticated with an API token.

A workflow can screenshot or print a page to PDF, fetch its fully rendered HTML, pull text and attributes for CSS selectors, run its own Puppeteer function, export a page with its assets, run a Lighthouse audit and load bot-protected pages through the stealth browser. It can also map a site’s URLs, search the web and scrape the results, smart-scrape a URL to markdown, and start, follow, list and cancel asynchronous crawls, and read the account’s unit usage.

An account works in one of three regions (US West, London, Amsterdam), each on its own host; the region is chosen once on the connection and only those hosts and api.browserless.io are called. Images, PDFs and archives come back as base64. Usage is billed in units: one per 30 seconds of browser time, plus proxy traffic and CAPTCHA solves.

Build with Browserless

Three routes to the same 16 actions. The Workflow tab is generated from Browserless's own manifest and carries its real ids, so it is copy-pasteable; the Code and CLI examples are the same call for any action on any app, so every app-specific value in them is a blank you fill in.

Get Account Usage

account-usage-get

Read the account's unit usage from the Browserless Usage API. One unit is 30 seconds of browser time; proxy traffic and CAPTCHA solves cost extra.

Get Rendered HTML

content

Load a URL (or raw HTML) in a headless browser, run its JavaScript, and return the fully rendered HTML.

Cancel Crawl

crawl-cancel

Cancel a running crawl. Pages already scraped stay retrievable.

List Crawls

crawl-list

List the account's crawl jobs, newest first, with status and progress counters.

Start Crawl

crawl-start

Start an asynchronous crawl that spiders a site and scrapes every page found. Returns a crawl id to poll with Get Crawl.

Get Crawl

crawl-status

Get a crawl's status, progress counters and a page of results. Each page carries a short-lived `contentUrl` to download its scraped content.

Export Page

export

Fetch a URL in a headless browser and return it as a file. With resources included, Browserless returns a ZIP of the page and its assets.

Run Function

function

Run your own Puppeteer JavaScript in a Browserless browser and return what it produces.

Map Site URLs

map

Discover the URLs of a website from its sitemap and page links, optionally ranked by a search term.

Render PDF

pdf

Render a URL or raw HTML to a PDF with Chrome's print engine (real, selectable text), returned as base64.

Run Lighthouse Audit

performance

Run a Lighthouse audit of a URL (performance, accessibility, SEO, best practices) and return the report.

Scrape Elements

scrape

Load a page, wait for its JavaScript, and return text, HTML, attributes and position for every element matching each CSS selector.

Take Screenshot

screenshot

Render a URL or raw HTML in a headless browser and capture a PNG, JPEG or WebP screenshot, returned as base64.

Search the Web

search

Search the web and optionally scrape every result page into markdown, HTML, links or screenshots.

Smart Scrape

smart-scrape

Scrape a URL to markdown, HTML, links, raw text, PDF or a screenshot. Browserless tries an HTTP fetch first, then a proxy, then a headless browser, and returns the first that works.

Unblock Page

unblock

Load a bot-protected page with Browserless's stealth browser and return its content, cookies and/or a screenshot. Pair with a residential proxy for hard targets.

A workflow step names the app and the action, and the editor fills in the connection when you pick one. This is the Step shape from the workflow spec, carrying Browserless's real ids.

{
  "manifestVersion": "2",
  "name": "browserless-example",
  "steps": [
    {
      "id": "crawl-start",
      "uses": {
        "app": "io.w6w.browserless",
        "action": "crawl-start",
        "connection": "conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID"
      },
      "with": {
        "url": "<url>"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Here are some of the things you can do

  • Start Crawl

    perform
    crawl-start
  • Get Account Usage

    read
    account-usage-get
  • Get Rendered HTML

    read
    content
  • List Crawls

    read
    crawl-list
  • Get Crawl

    read
    crawl-status

+11 more actions available

Every app-specific value here is a blank you have to fill in. An app action is reached through the connection that authenticates it, so the address is a connection id, not the app id — and connections belong to your account, so a public page cannot know yours. Create one for Browserless, then fill in the three blanks: conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID, the action key, and the parameters that action declares. The call itself is real — the shape is transcribed from the studio's own snippet builder, which prints the same kind of blanks — but nothing in it is specific to Browserless. The Workflow tab is where this app's real ids are.

Install
npm install @w6w/sdk
yarn add @w6w/sdk
pnpm add @w6w/sdk
deno add npm:@w6w/sdk
Code
import { W6wClient, isActionRun } from "@w6w/sdk";

// Reads W6W_BASE_URL and W6W_TOKEN from the environment when omitted.
const client = new W6wClient();

const envelope = await client.run({
  urn: "conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID",
  action: "crawl-start",
  payload: {
    url: "<value>",
    // limit: "<value>",
    // maxDepth: "<value>",
    // maxRetries: "<value>",
    // allowExternalLinks: "<value>",
    // allowSubdomains: "<value>",
    // sitemap: "<value>",
    // includePaths: "<value>",
    // excludePaths: "<value>",
    // delay: "<value>",
    // formats: "<value>",
    // onlyMainContent: "<value>",
    // proxy: "<value>",
    // webhookUrl: "<value>",
    // webhookEvents: "<value>",
    // requestOverrides: "<value>",
  },
});

if (isActionRun(envelope)) console.log(envelope.value);
Install the CLI
npm install -g @w6w/cli
CLI
w6w run conn_YOUR_CONNECTION_ID --action crawl-start --payload '{"url":"<value>"}'

Give an AI agent Browserless — without giving it Browserless's credentials. One MCP endpoint exposes every app, function and workflow the caller is entitled to, as tools it can discover and run. Access is granted per team while we onboard.

One tool call
{
  "name": "w6w_invoke",
  "arguments": {
    "ref": "app:io.w6w.browserless#crawl-start",
    "input": {
      "url": "<url>"
    }
  }
}

Every tool names its target with a single ref. The app: form above doesn't name a connection at all — the host resolves which of the caller's Browserless connections to sign with, and refuses rather than guesses when the answer is ambiguous.

What the agent gets

Credentials it can't read

The token is attached host-side, at the moment of the call. It is never a tool argument, never in the model's context, and never in a transcript — so a prompt injection has nothing to exfiltrate.

A tool surface scoped to the caller

Tools are derived per end user from what that person has actually connected and is entitled to — not one shared bot identity carrying the union of everyone's access.

A durable workflow in one call

Multi-step work runs on the workflow engine and returns a run handle the agent can poll — retries, branching and state survive the conversation that started them.

Health-aware discovery

Browserless's declared health checks are on the surface too, so an agent can tell "the vendor is down" from "your credential expired" before it burns a retry on either.

The MCP surface is part of the hosted platform. Browserless itself is MIT, and the runtime that executes it is source-available (FSL).

Request MCP access

Health checks

Browserless declares its own checks, so its health is a property of the app rather than something the host guesses at.

service

Browserless region status

Status of this connection's regional resource (US West, London or Amsterdam) on status.browserless.io (Better Stack). Other resources are shown but do not drive the verdict.

dependency

Regional API reachable

Unauthenticated GET /active on this connection's regional host with a bogus token. Browserless's plain-text `Invalid API key` refusal passes — it proves the application itself is answering, which the edge's HTML 401 would not.

quota

Unit allowance headroom