chrome-debug-mcp 0.9.0

Rust MCP Server for full Chrome CDP control and interactive JS debugging
chrome-debug-mcp-0.9.0 is not a library.

chrome-debug-mcp

License: MIT Rust

chrome-debug-mcp is an asynchronous Rust-based Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI agents and Large Language Models to natively control, automate, and debug Chromium-based browsers via the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP).

Using cdp-lite underneath, this MCP server directly hooks into the browser avoiding heavy abstractions, enabling live-debugging sessions directly from your editor or chat-interface. Starting from v0.2.0, it can also manage the Chrome process lifecycle automatically.

✨ Features (v0.9.0)

This server natively implements a suite of tools categorized by CDP domains and native process management:

🛠️ Custom CDP Commands (v0.9.0)

  • send_cdp_command: EXPERIMENTAL. Send any raw CDP command directly to the browser. This serves as a powerful fallback for any domain or command not yet natively implemented in specialized tools.
  • get_custom_events: Retrieve a list of events captured from the browser that are not handled by other specialized listeners (like network or console). Essential for observing the side-effects of custom commands.
  • Broad Event Capture: Automatically captures events from over 20+ domains (Target, DOM, CSS, Storage, etc.) and stores them in a rolling buffer for later inspection.

🚀 Chrome Instance Management (v0.8.0)

  • Proxy Support: restart_chrome now accepts an optional proxy_server argument to launch Chrome routing traffic through a proxy.
  • Auto-Launch: Automatically detects if Chrome is running on port 9222. If not, it spawns a new instance with the required flags.
  • restart_chrome: Restarts the managed Chrome instance.
  • stop_chrome: Shuts down the managed Chrome instance gracefully (SIGTERM/SIGINT with fallback to SIGKILL).
  • Robust Lifecycle: Fixed issues with dangling Chrome processes and patched preferences for cleaner restarts.

🔐 Proxy Authentication (v0.8.0)

  • enable_proxy_auth: Automatically handles proxy authentication challenges by hooking into the Fetch CDP domain and supplying user-provided credentials (username & password).
  • Robustness Improvements: Now features a 30-second timeout for slower residential proxies, and defaults to only intercepting Document requests to prevent breaking background requests.
  • Pre-warming: Automatically navigates to a prewarm_url (defaults to http://api.ipify.org?format=json) to establish the proxy tunnel reliably before your main navigation task. You can optionally restrict the interception to a specific resource_type.

🖱️ User Input (v0.5.1)

  • click_element: Simulates a native mouse click on a specific element by using a CSS selector. It calculates the center coordinates of the element and dispatches CDP mouse events directly.
  • fill_input: Fills an input field in the DOM with specified text. It focuses the element via CSS selector and then uses native CDP Input.insertText.
  • scroll: Scrolls the page by pixels, viewport heights (pages), or to a specific element. Essential for interacting with lazy-loaded content or infinite scrolling.

📡 Network Inspection (v0.3.0)

  • get_network_logs: Retrieve intercepted network requests (REST/HTTP) and WebSocket frames.
  • Advanced Filtering: Filter logs by URL, resource type, WebSocket direction, or payload content.
  • Payload Inspection: Access full request/response headers, REST response bodies, and WebSocket frames.
  • Context Optimized: Optional "summary mode" to avoid flooding the LLM context window.

🪵 Console & Errors (v0.6.0)

  • get_console_logs: Retrieve console logs from the browser. This includes console.log/warn/error calls, exceptions, and network errors. Crucial for troubleshooting page scripts and errors. Includes optional log level filtering and a clear flag to manage state efficiently.

⚡ Performance & Profiling (v0.7.1)

  • get_performance_metrics: Retrieve run-time performance metrics from the browser (e.g., JS heap size, DOM nodes, layout duration). Useful for getting a quick snapshot of the page's memory and computational overhead.
  • profile_page_performance: Record and analyze a performance trace of the page. It automatically calculates Core Web Vitals (FCP, LCP, DCL, Load) and identifies the top Long Tasks (main thread blocking operations). You can optionally reload the page with cache disabled to simulate a cold start.

🌐 Page & Runtime Control

  • capture_screenshot: Take a screenshot of the current page (or full page layout) and return it to the LLM client as a base64 encoded image block.
  • navigate: Navigate the active tab to a specific URL.
  • reload: Reload the current page.
  • inspect_dom: Fetch the entire HTML or a smart snippet around a search query.
    • Context Search: Search for specific text and get a configurable number of characters around it.
    • Token Efficiency: Drastically reduce context window usage for large pages.
  • evaluate_js: Run an arbitrary JavaScript expression globally on the page context.

🐞 Live Debugging & Execution Control

  • pause_on_load: Enables the debugger and triggers a page reload, pausing execution on the very first parsed script statement.
  • search_scripts: Search across all parsed script contexts for a query to accurately find lines and columns for breakpoints.
  • set_breakpoint: Set a precise JS breakpoint using script_id, url, or exact script_hash.
  • evaluate_on_call_frame: Evaluate a JavaScript expression directly inside the local scope of the currently paused debugger call frame.
  • step_over: Step over the next expression line.
  • resume: Unpause and resume the execution.
  • remove_breakpoint: Remove a previously set breakpoint.

🧪 Stability & Reliability

  • Extensive Unit Testing: Comprehensive test suite ensuring the reliability of event processing and tool deserialization, particularly in the debugger domain.
  • Side-Effect Free Tests: All unit tests are designed to run in isolation, without launching real Chrome instances or modifying the filesystem.
  • Internal Refactoring: Decoupled core logic through traits and dependency injection to ensure long-term maintainability.

🚀 Quick Start

The easiest way to install and run the MCP Server natively is via Rust's Cargo or by downloading the pre-compiled binaries. You do not need to start Chrome manually anymore, the MCP Server will automatically launch a visible instance of Chrome with the correct debugging flags.

1. Installation

Option A: Pre-compiled Binaries (Recommended) Go to the Releases page and download the native executable for your platform (macOS, Windows, Linux). We provide .msi installers for Windows and shell scripts for UNIX systems.

Option B: Install via Cargo

cargo install --git https://github.com/raultov/chrome-debug-mcp

Option C: Install via Shell Script (Unix)

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/raultov/chrome-debug-mcp/releases/latest/download/chrome-debug-mcp-installer.sh | sh

2. Configure your MCP Client

Configure your AI client (like Claude Desktop, Zed, Cursor, or Gemini CLI) to execute the installed binary.

Gemini CLI (Recommended)

To add and activate the server in Gemini CLI:

gemini mcp add chrome-debug-mcp chrome-debug-mcp

Then, inside the Gemini CLI session, enable it:

/mcp enable chrome-debug-mcp

Claude Desktop

Example configuration for Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "chrome-debug-mcp": {
      "command": "chrome-debug-mcp",
      "args": [],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

Note: If you downloaded the binary manually, replace "chrome-debug-mcp" with the absolute path to the executable.

3. Usage

Once connected, the AI agent will automatically handle starting Chrome when the first command is executed. The browser will remain visible so you can visually track the debugging process.

🛠 Compilation (From Source)

If you wish to compile from source:

git clone https://github.com/raultov/chrome-debug-mcp
cd chrome-debug-mcp
cargo build --release

The resulting binary will be located in target/release/chrome-debug-mcp. This project utilizes cargo-dist to handle cross-platform native distribution seamlessly via GitHub Actions.

📖 Why this MCP Server?

Other integration servers like Puppeteer/Playwright wrappers are high-level, heavy, and typically fail at exposing real, interactive step-by-step debuggers. This MCP server uses raw CDP messages mapping them 1:1 to LLM tools, which allows intelligent agents to literally step over JS, read local scope variables natively, search inside V8 compiler contexts, and understand exactly why a script is crashing.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.