invisible-playwright-mcp

A stealth Firefox, exposed as an MCP server, so an AI agent can browse and act on real websites without being blocked by anti-bot systems.

It wraps invisible-playwright, a real Firefox patched at the C++ source, and hands your client the usual browser tools: navigate, click, type, read, screenshot. The fingerprint is set inside the engine, not bolted onto the page.

First, one prerequisite

Python 3.11 or newer, on Windows (x86_64) or Linux (x86_64, arm64) - macOS is not supported, the last engine build for it was firefox-20. Then uv, because the command below starts with uvx:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh              # Linux

irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex                   # Windows

Then pick one

Do you already use an AI assistant that can run tools? If yes, it brings the model and you add this browser to it. If no, or if you would rather watch the work happen, there is an interface that brings a model too.

1. Add it to the assistant you have

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --scope user stealth -- uvx invisible-playwright-mcp

Then check it took, before trusting it:

claude mcp list

For every other client, see Adding it to your client below.

2. Run the interface instead

AIHawk. Bring an OpenRouter account and its key, get a page with the chat on the left and the live browser on the right.

uvx aihawk ui --openrouter-key sk-or-...

Open http://127.0.0.1:8765.

It is a client of this server like any other, with no private path to the page - which is the reason to believe the tools below are enough to build on.

The download nobody warns you about

The browser is about a quarter of a gigabyte and it is not fetched when the server is installed, nor when it starts. It arrives on the first tool call that needs a page, so the first thing you ask your assistant to do sits there, and on a slow connection you get a timeout that says nothing about a download.

Get it over with first, in a terminal where you can watch it:

uvx invisible-playwright fetch

Cached afterwards, and shared with anything else that uses this engine. Per-platform sizes are in the engine's README.

Adding it to your client

Four clients have a command for this. The rest take a config file, and the file is not the same everywhere: three different top-level keys, and one of them is not even JSON. Find yours below.

If your client has a command

Claude Code. --scope user because the default scope is the current project, so without it the tools do not appear anywhere else and nothing reports an error:

claude mcp add --scope user stealth -- uvx invisible-playwright-mcp

Codex:

codex mcp add stealth -- uvx invisible-playwright-mcp

Gemini CLI. No -- separator here, unlike the two above:

gemini mcp add --scope user stealth uvx invisible-playwright-mcp

VS Code (GitHub Copilot agent mode):

code --add-mcp "{\"name\":\"stealth\",\"command\":\"uvx\",\"args\":[\"invisible-playwright-mcp\"]}"

If your client takes a config file

Most use a top-level mcpServers - Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "stealth": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["invisible-playwright-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Zed calls the key context_servers, not mcpServers, in ~/.config/zed/settings.json (%APPDATA%\Zed\settings.json on Windows):

{
  "context_servers": {
    "stealth": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["invisible-playwright-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

VS Code calls it servers, in .vscode/mcp.json for a workspace:

{
  "servers": {
    "stealth": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["invisible-playwright-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Codex uses TOML, in ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.stealth]
command = "uvx"
args = ["invisible-playwright-mcp"]

Continue uses YAML with its own block format, which changed recently enough that we would rather point you at their documentation than print a block here that may already be stale.

Where a proxy and the other settings go

Everything in Settings below goes under env on the server entry, in whatever shape your client uses:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "stealth": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["invisible-playwright-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "STEALTHFOX_PROXY": "http://user:pass@proxy.example.com:8080",
        "STEALTHFOX_SEED": "4242"
      }
    }
  }
}

In Codex's TOML that is a [mcp_servers.stealth.env] table; on the command line, Claude Code and Codex take -e KEY=value and --env KEY=value.

⛔ "Added" is not "connected". Every one of these writes a config entry without running anything, so a typo, a missing uv, or the first-run browser download all surface later as a server that will not start. Check before you trust it: claude mcp list, codex mcp list, or your client's MCP panel.

Settings

Environment variables, all optional. A proxy is the one worth adding: without it the exit IP, timezone and locale are your own machine's, which is a real gap between what the browser says it is and where it appears to be.

Tools

session_start, session_status, session_new_page, session_list_pages, session_select_page, session_close_page, browser_navigate, browser_read_text, browser_snapshot, browser_read_html, browser_click, browser_click_at, browser_type, browser_press_key, browser_evaluate, browser_take_screenshot, browser_select_option.

Who is browsing

You can ignore this entirely. Say nothing and every session is a different stranger, which is the right default.

When you do care, session_start chooses the person and session_status tells you who you currently are. There is one browser, so two identities are visited in turn rather than at once.

• seed is the identity. The same seed is the same fingerprint every time. Leave it out and one is drawn for you, and the answer says which, so a session worth repeating can be repeated.
• profile is a directory holding cookies and logins. A profile also owns its seed: the first session on a new one stores the identity inside it and every session after reuses it, so a login never comes back wearing different hardware. Ask for a seed that contradicts the one a profile carries and you get a refusal naming both numbers, never a silent choice between them.
• proxy is where the traffic leaves. Pass "" to either of the last two to insist on none, which is how you get sessions a site cannot link together even when the environment sets a default.

A profile does not own its exit the way it owns its seed. Timezone, locale and geography come from the exit, so the same login arriving from another country is as visible as one arriving on different hardware. You are warned when a profile's exit changes - but only when you change it. A provider rotating its own addresses behind one host and port is indistinguishable from here, and no warning should be read as saying otherwise.

The order to try them in

The server hands every client this ladder, because a model that cannot find a way down it invents one:

1. A named tool with a selector - browser_click, browser_type, browser_select_option, browser_press_key. browser_snapshot supplies the selector.
2. Coordinates - the snapshot reports at: [x, y] for every element, and browser_click_at moves the pointer there. For a canvas, a slider, a map, a widget built out of divs.
3. A screenshot - browser_take_screenshot, then browser_click_at on what you can see. For what the snapshot does not list at all.
4. browser_evaluate, to READ what none of the above can see.

browser_evaluate reads; it will not act. Assigning to value, checked or selected, or calling click(), dispatchEvent() or submit(), is refused, and the refusal names the tool to use instead. Script reaches the page with no keystroke and no pointer, so the event carries isTrusted false, which is the clearest signal a page can collect that nobody is really there. Reading those properties is fine.

browser_click_at takes viewport coordinates instead of a selector, moves the pointer there rather than teleporting, and optionally holds before releasing - for a slider, a canvas-drawn challenge, or a press-and-hold.

browser_snapshot returns the title, the url and the visible interactive elements rather than the accessibility tree. Every element carries at: [x, y], its centre in the viewport, and a selector as well when one can reach it - pass that straight to browser_click or browser_type. browser_read_html returns reduced markup instead, for when the structure is what matters.

Tool names mirror the Microsoft Playwright MCP, so prompts written for it work here too.

Why each of those returns what it does, with the measurements behind it: docs/tool-design.md.

More than one client on the same browser

Over stdio the browser belongs to the client that opened it. Set STEALTHFOX_MCP_TRANSPORT=http and it does not: the session is owned by the server, so a second client can attach to the browser the first one left open, and closing a client no longer kills the browser.

To SEE the browser rather than share it, use AIHawk from column 2, which shows the live page beside the conversation.

STEALTHFOX_MCP_TRANSPORT=http uvx invisible-playwright-mcp        # Linux

$env:STEALTHFOX_MCP_TRANSPORT = "http"; uvx invisible-playwright-mcp   # Windows

Notes

• This is a browser, not a captcha solver. It does not solve or bypass challenges for you; it makes an ordinary Firefox session look like a real one.

License

MIT, the same as the engine it wraps.