scitex-browser 0.1.15

Browser automation for scholarly paper access in the SciTeX ecosystem

scitex-browser

Playwright wrappers for scholarly paper access — popup handling, PDF capture, failure-replay screenshots, stealth browsing.

Full Documentation · uv pip install scitex-browser[all]

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Problem and Solution

#	Problem	Solution
1	Playwright is great but verbose -- every scraping script reinvents popup dismissal, retry logic, Chrome-PDF-viewer workaround	Helpers: click_with_fallbacks_async([sel1, sel2]), save_as_pdf_async, close_popups_async, inject_visual_effects — focused wrappers around Playwright
2	Tests fail silently with no artifact -- pytest-playwright doesn't auto-capture screen + DOM on failure	TestMonitor + create_failure_capture_fixture -- captures screenshot + page HTML + console log on every failure

Features

• Debugging: Visual cursor feedback, popup logging, failure capture, test monitoring
• PDF: Chrome PDF viewer detection, save-as-PDF automation
• Interaction: Click/fill with fallbacks, popup handling
• Stealth: Human-like behavior simulation, stealth browser management
• Remote: ZenRows API integration, CAPTCHA handling
• Collaboration: Shared browser sessions, credential management
• Auth: Google authentication helpers

Installation

pip install scitex-browser

Architecture

scitex-browser/
├── src/scitex_browser/
│   ├── __init__.py              # save_as_pdf, click_with_fallbacks_async, ...
│   ├── debugging/               # TestMonitor, capture_debug_artifacts_async
│   │   ├── _capture.py          # screenshot + HTML + console artifacts
│   │   └── _monitor.py          # pytest-playwright failure hook
│   ├── stealth/                 # StealthManager + playwright-stealth glue
│   ├── remote/                  # ZenRows API + CAPTCHA handling
│   ├── auth/                    # Google + shared-session helpers
│   └── pdf/                     # Chrome-PDF-viewer detection, save_as_pdf
└── tests/                       # pytest-playwright suite

Optional extras

pip install scitex-browser[stealth]   # playwright-stealth
pip install scitex-browser[remote]    # ZenRows integration
pip install scitex-browser[scitex]    # Full SciTeX integration

Quick start

from scitex_browser import save_as_pdf, browser_logger
from scitex_browser.stealth import StealthManager

1 Interfaces

Python API

from scitex_browser import (
    save_as_pdf, save_as_pdf_async,
    click_with_fallbacks_async, close_popups_async,
    inject_visual_effects, browser_logger,
)
from scitex_browser.stealth import StealthManager
from scitex_browser.debugging import (
    TestMonitor, create_failure_capture_fixture,
    capture_debug_artifacts_async,        # screenshot + HTML in one call
)

click_with_fallbacks_async and fill_with_fallbacks_async capture screenshot + HTML before/after every call by default (capture_debug=True). Drop capture_debug=False only in tight loops. See _skills/scitex-browser/11_debugging-visuals.md for the full pattern.

Demo

sequenceDiagram
    participant T as pytest test
    participant H as click_with_fallbacks_async
    participant P as Playwright Page
    participant C as capture_debug_artifacts_async
    T->>H: click(["#accept", ".cookie-ok"])
    H->>P: try selector 1
    P-->>H: not found
    H->>P: try selector 2 -> click
    H->>C: snapshot before/after
    C-->>T: screenshot.png + page.html + console.log

Part of SciTeX

scitex-browser is part of SciTeX. Install via the umbrella with pip install scitex[browser] to use as scitex.browser (Python) or scitex browser ... (CLI).

Four Freedoms for Research

0. The freedom to run your research anywhere — your machine, your terms.
1. The freedom to study how every step works — from raw data to final manuscript.
2. The freedom to redistribute your workflows, not just your papers.
3. The freedom to modify any module and share improvements with the community.

AGPL-3.0 — because we believe research infrastructure deserves the same freedoms as the software it runs on.

License

AGPL-3.0. See LICENSE for details.

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