1. Yes, the extension uses an anonymous device ID and sends an analytics event when a tool call is used. You can inspect the network traffic to verify that zero personalized or identifying information is sent.
I collect anonymized usage data to get an idea of how often people are using the extension in the same way that websites count visitors. I split my time between many projects and having a sense of how many active users there are is helpful for deciding which ones to focus on.
2. The extension is completely written by me, and I wrote in this GitHub issue why the repo currently only contains the MCP server (in short, I use a monorepo that contains code used by all my extensions and extracting this extension and maintaining multiple monorepos while keeping them in sync would require quite a bit of work): https://github.com/BrowserMCP/mcp/issues/1#issuecomment-2784...
I understand that you're frustrated with the way I've built this project, but there's really nothing nefarious going on here. Cheers!
Hey, as a maker, I get it. You spent time building something, and you want to understand how it gets used. If you're not collecting personal info, there is nothing wrong with this.
Knee-jerk reactions aren't helpful. Yes, too much tracking is not good, but some tracking is definitely important to improving a product over time and focusing your efforts.
I just published a new version of the @browsermcp/mcp library (version 0.1.1) that handles the error better until I can investigate further so it should hopefully work now if you're using @browsermcp/mcp@latest.
It's working now with the 0.1.0 for me. But I will let you know if I experience any issues once I get updated to 0.1.1.
Thanks, great job! I like it overall, but I noticed it has some issues entering text in forms, even on google.com. It's able to find a workaround and insert the searched text in the URL, but it would be nice if the entry into forms worked well for UI testing.
Thanks for the report and the update! I'd love to hear about what you changed — how can I get in touch? I didn't see anything in your HN profile. Feel free to email me at admin@browsermcp.io
Browser MCP uses the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) to automate the browser so it currently only works for Chromium-based browsers.
Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't expose WebDriver BiDi (the standardized version of CDP) to browser extensions AFAIK (someone please correct me if I'm mistaken!), so I don't think I can support it even if I tried.
Of course, you're sending data to the AI model, but the "private" aspect is contrasting automating using a local browser vs. automating using a remote browser.
When you automate using a remote browser, another service (not the AI model) gets all of the browsing activity and any information you send (e.g. usernames and passwords) that's required for the automation.
With Browser MCP, since you're automating locally, your sensitive data and browser activity (apart from the results of MCP tool calls that's sent to the AI model) stay on your device.
I think we need to be very careful & intentional about the language we use with these kinds of tools, especially now that the MCP floodgates have been opened. You aren't just exposing the users browsing data to which ever model they are using, you are also exposing it any tools they may be allowing as well.
A lot of non technical people are using these tools to "vibe" their way to productivity. I would explicitly tell them that potentially "all" of their browsing data is going to be exposed to their LLM client and they need to use this at their own risk.
An extension is more user-friendly! I leave Chrome open basically 24/7 and having to create a new Chrome instance via the command line just to use Browser MCP just felt like too high of a barrier.
The Puppeteer MCP server doesn't work well because it requires CSS selectors to interact with elements. It makes up CSS selectors rather than reading the page and generating working selectors.
The Playwright MCP server is great! Currently Browser MCP is largely an adaptation of the Playwright MCP server to use with your actual browser rather than creating a new one each time. This allows you to reuse your existing Chrome profile so that you don't need to log in to each service all over again and avoids bot detection which often triggers when using the fresh browser instances created by Playwright.
I also plan to add other useful tools (e.g. Browser MCP currently supports a tool to get the console logs which is useful for automated debugging) which will likely diverge from the Playwright MCP server features.
by the way, you can indeed access your personal context with Playwright. just `launchPersistentContext()` and set the userDataDir to that of your existing Chrome install:
1. Yes, the extension uses an anonymous device ID and sends an analytics event when a tool call is used. You can inspect the network traffic to verify that zero personalized or identifying information is sent.
I collect anonymized usage data to get an idea of how often people are using the extension in the same way that websites count visitors. I split my time between many projects and having a sense of how many active users there are is helpful for deciding which ones to focus on.
2. The extension is completely written by me, and I wrote in this GitHub issue why the repo currently only contains the MCP server (in short, I use a monorepo that contains code used by all my extensions and extracting this extension and maintaining multiple monorepos while keeping them in sync would require quite a bit of work): https://github.com/BrowserMCP/mcp/issues/1#issuecomment-2784...
I understand that you're frustrated with the way I've built this project, but there's really nothing nefarious going on here. Cheers!