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User guide

Install

Browsentic is two halves — a browser extension and a local daemon. This page builds both and loads the extension. Then pair them.

2 min read Edit this page on GitHub

There is no account, no API key and no cloud service. Browsentic drives your real browser using the AI agent you already run locally.

Prerequisites

Requirement Check
Node 20 or newer node --version
Browser Chrome, or another Chromium browser (Edge, Brave, Arc). Firefox has a build target. —
Agent One of Claude Code, Codex or Antigravity on your PATH, logged in claude --version, codex --version, agy --version
git To clone the repository git --version

Four things worth knowing before you start:

  • An agent CLI is only needed for the side panel. It is what the daemon spawns to reason about an instruction. If you only ever drive the browser from an MCP client, the daemon spawns nothing and no agent CLI is required. See Choosing an agent.
  • Only one of the three is needed. Browsentic checks all three and tells you in the popup which are installed. Switching is a click.
  • Yarn is not a prerequisite. The pinned Yarn 4 release ships inside the repository and the setup script invokes it through Node. No global install, no Corepack.
  • @browsentic/mcp is not published to npm. Install from source; npx -y @browsentic/mcp will not resolve.

1. Clone and build 

git clone https://github.com/imshaikot/browsentic.git
cd browsentic
node scripts/setup.mjs

That runs four steps: extension dependencies, extension build, daemon dependencies, daemon build. mcp/ is a separate Yarn project with its own lockfile, which is why the root install does not cover it. Once dependencies exist, yarn setup re-runs the same thing.

When it finishes you have:

dist/chrome-mv3     the unpacked extension
mcp/dist            the daemon and MCP server

2. Load the extension

  1. Open chrome://extensions
  2. Turn on Developer mode (top right)
  3. Load unpacked → select dist/chrome-mv3

Pin Browsentic to the toolbar so the popup is one click away.

Firefox: yarn build:firefox, then load dist/firefox-mv2 through about:debugging → This Firefox → Load Temporary Add-on. Firefox is a supported build target, but Chromium is what Browsentic is developed against.

Installing from source means Chrome will not auto-update the extension, and will not auto-reload it after a rebuild — press ↻ on the Browsentic card at chrome://extensions yourself. See Maintenance.

Next

Pair your browser → — the extension connects to nothing until you do.