pagouse

By ref, not by pixel. pagouse is a page agent for coding agents: a Chromium extension on the daily profile that reads the accessibility tree, hands your agent stable ref_N labels, and — only with a grant — clicks, fills, and navigates those nodes.

It observes by default. Mutation needs --allow-input. The optional MCP server is observe-only and cannot be talked into typing.

$ pagouse --json snapshot --tab 1840 | jq -r '.snapshot.tree' | head
RootWebArea "Inbox" [ref_1]
  textbox "Search" [ref_2]
  button "Compose" [ref_3]

How it works

• The MV3 extension builds the accessibility tree inside the page, where the refs stay valid across separate CLI invocations.

• Native messaging starts pagoused, a local daemon on an owner-only unix socket. No remote-debugging port, no chrome.debugger.

• A zero-dependency Python core wraps it all in a versioned --json envelope (schema: 1).

The layers and the non-goals: docs/architecture.md.

Related MCP server: Playwright MCP

Requirements

• Linux

• Python 3.13+ and uv

• A Chromium-family browser (Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Edge) on the daily profile

The core itself has zero dependencies. magick is optional for --fit downscaling.

Install

git clone https://github.com/gianlucamazza/pagouse
cd pagouse
./install.sh

install.sh installs pagouse as a uv tool, writes ~/.config/pagouse/config.toml if missing, links the agent skill into any existing skill root, and registers the native-messaging host. It is idempotent. Details in docs/quickstart.md.

Then load extension/ unpacked (chrome://extensions → Developer mode). pagouse --json doctor should report ready once the popup is green.

Usage

Observe — never needs a grant:

pagouse --json tabs
pagouse --json snapshot --tab ID

Drive — add --allow-input, click by ref, never by coordinates:

pagouse --json --allow-input click --ref ref_4 --tab ID --then snapshot

Every command and flag: docs/cli-reference.md. The envelope and error codes: docs/json-contract.md.

MCP extra and agent skill

uv tool install 'pagouse[mcp]' provides pagouse-mcp: read-only observation tools only (doctor, tabs, snapshot, shot, wait, wait_ref). There is no mutate tool; drive the page through the CLI and a grant.

install.sh also links skills/pagouse/SKILL.md into any existing agent skill root, so your agents get the playbook without setup.

Security

Observation never asks permission; mutation refuses without an explicit grant. Scheme deny, origin policy, and secret redaction are enforced in the core. Tab titles, URLs, tree text, and shot pixels are untrusted input. Read docs/security-model.md before enabling input. Report vulnerabilities per SECURITY.md.

Documentation

License

MIT. See LICENSE.