anyweb 0.5.3

CLI-first browser automation with platform intelligence

anyweb

CLI-first browser automation for AI agents. One command reads a webpage, one command clicks a button — no boilerplate, no browser lifecycle to manage.

Built on Playwright with anti-detection, a persistent daemon, and platform-specific extractors for X, Zhihu, XHS, and more.

Why anyweb

AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, etc.) need to interact with the web but can't drive a browser natively. anyweb fills that gap:

• Atomic commands — open, click, input, keys, read — each one maps to a single action
• Persistent daemon — browser stays alive between commands, ~50ms latency vs ~3s cold start
• Multi-page parallelism — --page flag runs named tabs concurrently, perfect for batch queries
• Accessibility tree — state --ax returns a compact, structured page representation with text, URLs, and element indices — ideal for LLM context
• Content-stable waiting — wait content-stable detects when dynamic content (Grok responses, streaming results) finishes loading
• Platform intelligence — read auto-detects X/Zhihu/XHS and applies platform-specific extraction

Install

pip install anyweb        # or: uv tool install anyweb
anyweb install            # install Chromium

Quick start

# Read any webpage — auto-detects platform
anyweb read "https://x.com/karpathy"

# JSON output for programmatic use
anyweb --json read "https://x.com/karpathy"

# Search within a platform
anyweb search x "embodied AI news" --limit 10

# System health check
anyweb doctor

Commands

High-level

Command	What it does
read URL	Smart extract: auto-detect platform, render JS, return clean content
search PLATFORM QUERY	Search within X / Zhihu / XHS
login PLATFORM	Save session cookies (opens browser window)
status	Daemon, browsers, pages, sessions, recommended actions
doctor [--fix]	Dependency + credential check with auto-repair

Atomic browser

Command	What it does
open URL	Navigate (starts daemon if needed)
state	List interactive elements with indices
state --ax	Accessibility tree — compact text + URLs for LLMs
click IDX	Click element by index or CSS selector
input IDX "text"	Click element, then type
type "text"	Type via keyboard events (no click)
keys Enter	Send keyboard events
hover IDX	Hover over element
scroll down	Scroll the page
eval "js"	Execute JavaScript (supports Promises)
screenshot	Capture screenshot
get text|title|url	Get page info
wait selector "h1"	Wait for CSS selector
wait content-stable	Wait for dynamic content to settle
back	Navigate back
close	Close browser; daemon stays alive
shutdown	Stop everything

Diagnostics

Command	What it does
log [-f] [--errors]	View, follow, or filter daemon command log
sessions	List saved sessions with expiry info
cookies	Cookie management

Multi-page parallelism

--page NAME runs multiple named tabs concurrently — essential for batch operations like querying Grok 4 times in parallel:

# Open 4 pages
anyweb open --page g1 "https://x.com/i/grok?new=true"
anyweb open --page g2 "https://x.com/i/grok?new=true" &
anyweb open --page g3 "https://x.com/i/grok?new=true" &
anyweb open --page g4 "https://x.com/i/grok?new=true" &
wait

# Submit queries in parallel
anyweb input --page g1 textarea "Query 1" && anyweb keys --page g1 Enter &
anyweb input --page g2 textarea "Query 2" && anyweb keys --page g2 Enter &
wait

# Wait for all responses to finish
anyweb wait --page g1 content-stable --duration 5 --timeout 120000 &
anyweb wait --page g2 content-stable --duration 5 --timeout 120000 &
wait

# Read results
anyweb state --page g1 --ax > /tmp/result1.txt
anyweb state --page g2 --ax > /tmp/result2.txt

read manages pages internally — no --page needed for batch reads:

anyweb --json read "https://x.com/AnthropicAI" > /tmp/a.json &
anyweb --json read "https://x.com/OpenAI" > /tmp/b.json &
anyweb --json read "https://x.com/karpathy" > /tmp/c.json &
wait

Accessibility tree

state --ax returns the page structure optimized for LLM consumption — text, links, and interactive elements in a compact format:

URL: https://x.com/karpathy
Title: Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) / X
Refs: 42 interactive elements
---
RootWebArea "Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) / X"
  e0:link "Home" -> https://x.com/home
  e1:link "Search" -> https://x.com/explore
  ...
  StaticText "The hottest new programming language is English"
  e12:link "View tweet" -> https://x.com/karpathy/status/1617979122625712128

Options: --interactive-only (clickable/typable elements only), --depth N (limit tree depth).

Platform intelligence

read auto-detects the platform from the URL and applies the right extraction:

Platform	Detection	Extraction
X/Twitter	x.com, twitter.com	Tweets, threads, profiles, engagement stats, media URLs
Zhihu	zhihu.com	Auto-expand folded content, answers
XHS	xiaohongshu.com	Notes, comments, images
Generic	everything else	Article body, metadata

Force a platform: anyweb read -p x "https://example.com"

Session management

Login once, use forever. Cookies persist across daemon restarts:

anyweb login x                    # opens browser, you log in, cookies saved
anyweb login x --method import    # import from system Chrome (no manual login)
anyweb login x --method cookie    # paste cookies directly

doctor and status show session health:

=== Sessions ===
  x         : saved 2026-05-18 | cookies: 465 | expires 2027-05-25
  zhihu     : saved 2026-05-08 | cookies: 36  | expires 2026-11-03
  xhs       : no auth cookie ❌

=== Recommended Actions ===
  anyweb login xhs

Output formats

anyweb read URL              # plain text (default, pipe-friendly)
anyweb --json read URL       # structured JSON with metadata
anyweb --markdown read URL   # markdown with frontmatter

Architecture

CLI ──▶ Unix socket ──▶ Daemon (persistent) ──▶ Playwright browser
                         │
                         ├── Headless engine (default, fast)
                         └── CDP engine (system Chrome, for login/headed)

• Daemon auto-starts on first command, stays alive across invocations
• Dual engine: headless Playwright for speed, CDP to system Chrome for --headed / login
• Anti-detection: playwright-stealth applied automatically
• Session isolation: per-platform cookie storage in ~/.anyweb/sessions/

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• macOS or Linux

License

MIT