browse

A Claude Code web browser.

Install

Add the marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add jamubc/toolbox

Install the plugin:

/plugin install browse@toolbox

Usage

| Command | What it does | | --- | --- | | /browse | Opens the browser on a start page: type an address or a search and press Enter, or pick YouTube, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, Hacker News or GitHub. | | /browse <address or words> | Opens the address, or searches DuckDuckGo. | | /browse close, or the pane's ✕ | Closes the pane and stops the browser and its sound. | | The address bar | Type an address or words and press Enter. It has the keys when the start page opens. | | Click the page | Clicks there. Your keys then go to the page; Esc gives them back to the prompt. | | Mouse wheel over the page | Scrolls the page. | | /config → How the page is drawn | auto, always real pixels (kitty or Ghostty only) or always colored blocks (any terminal). |

Compatibility

| Where you run Claude Code | Picture | Sound | | --- | --- | --- | | kitty, Ghostty | Real pixels (kitty graphics protocol). Untested so far. | Yes | | Any other terminal: Terminal.app, iTerm2, Zed, VS Code's terminal, WezTerm, tmux, or over ssh | Colored half-blocks, two pixels per character. Video is recognizable but chunky, and small text cannot be read. | Yes, on the machine running Claude Code | | Claude desktop app, VS Code extension, mobile | Nothing. The pane says the browser only draws in the terminal, and no browser starts. | No |

| System | Status | | --- | --- | | macOS | Tested: YouTube with sound, clicks, keys, the wheel, closing. | | Linux | Should work; untested. Chrome is looked up on your PATH. | | Windows | Not supported yet. The pane says so. |

• Needs Chrome, Chromium, Brave or Edge, and Node.js 18 or later on your PATH. If one is missing, the pane says which and offers Try again. You can set either in /config → Browser to draw in and Node.js 18+ to run it.
• Inside tmux or over ssh the picture is always blocks, even from kitty or Ghostty, because neither passes the images through.
• If you force real pixels on a terminal that cannot draw them, the pane says so; set /config → How the page is drawn back to auto or colored blocks.
• One browser at a time: if another Claude Code session has the pane open, /browse says so.
• While a video plays, expect roughly a fifth of a CPU core each for Claude Code drawing the pane and for Chrome (measured on an M-series Mac).

<details> <summary>Functions</summary> <br>

• browser/browser.mjs runs Chrome headless and drives it over the DevTools protocol, with no dependencies.
  • Frames go out on stdout at up to 15 a second.
  • Clicks, keys and navigation come in over a Unix socket in a private temp folder.
• hooks/register.tsx draws the pane, answers /browse, and forwards the wheel.
• hooks/pointer.tsx lies over the picture and passes on clicks and keys.
• Closing the pane, a hot reload, or Claude Code exiting stops the browser. If Claude Code is killed, the helper notices within two seconds and stops Chrome.
• /clear and /compact leave the page up: /clear starts a new session in the same process, so the pane keeps what it was showing and writes it into the new one.

</details> <details> <summary>Privacy</summary>

• An address you open with /browse <address> shows in the conversation as the command's reply, so Claude can read it. Pages, frames and what you type into the page stay between the pane and the local Chrome.
• Chrome is driven over a pipe, not a network port, so no other program on your machine can take control of it.
• The browser keeps its own profile in ~/.cache/claude-browse/chrome-profile: cookies and logins persist there between sessions, apart from your everyday Chrome profile. Delete that folder to forget them.
• Searches go to DuckDuckGo, as typed.

</details>