Browser

ht browser controls the built-in browser panes. Designed for agents, CI scripts, and visual regression workflows.

Top-level

ht browser open <url>                 # open in current pane (creates one if needed)
ht browser open-split <url>           # open as a new split
ht browser list                       # list browser surfaces

Every other command targets a specific browser surface:

ht browser <id> <command> [args]
# example:
ht browser browser:2 navigate https://example.org
ht browser browser:2 click "button[type='submit']"

Inside a browser pane, HT_SURFACE is auto-set so you can omit the id:

ht browser navigate https://example.org    # uses HT_SURFACE

Navigation

Command	Purpose
navigate <url>	Go to URL.
goto <url>	Alias for navigate.
back	History back.
forward	History forward.
reload	Reload the page.
url / get-url	Print the current URL.
identify	Surface id, title, URL.

navigate / goto accept http:// and https:// (including localhost / LAN dev servers), about: (e.g. about:blank), data:, and chrome-extension:// URLs. file:// URLs are intentionally rejected for security — they would let a browser pane read arbitrary local files over the socket.

Waiting

ht browser browser:1 wait --selector "#dashboard" --timeout-ms 15000
ht browser browser:1 wait --text "Welcome" --timeout-ms 15000
ht browser browser:1 wait --load-state complete

Pick at most one of --selector, --text, --load-state. --timeout-ms defaults to 30000.

Interacting

Command	Args	Purpose
click <selector>		Click.
dblclick <selector>		Double click.
hover <selector>		Hover.
focus <selector>		Focus.
check <selector> / uncheck <selector>		Toggle a checkbox.
scroll-into-view <selector>		Scroll element into viewport.
type <selector> <text>		Type text into focused field.
fill <selector> <text>		Set value.
press <key>		Send a key (e.g. Enter, Escape, Control+a).
keydown <key> / keyup <key>		Lower-level key events.
select <selector> <value>		Select an <option>.
scroll <x> <y>		Scroll the page.
highlight <selector>		Visual highlight (debug).

Inspecting

ht browser browser:1 snapshot                  # accessibility tree
ht browser browser:1 get title
ht browser browser:1 get url
ht browser browser:1 get text "#welcome"       # textContent of selector
ht browser browser:1 get value "#email"
ht browser browser:1 is visible "#dashboard"
ht browser browser:1 is enabled "button[type='submit']"
ht browser browser:1 is checked "#agree"

Injecting

ht browser browser:1 addscript "console.log('hello')"
ht browser browser:1 addstyle "body { background: red }"
ht browser browser:1 eval "document.title"
ht browser browser:1 eval "await fetch('/api/health').then(r => r.json())"

eval returns the JSON-serialized result. Async expressions are awaited automatically.

addscript, addstyle, and eval reject payloads larger than 256 KiB — this only affects pathologically large scripts or stylesheets.

Console / errors

ht browser browser:1 console                   # tail console logs
ht browser browser:1 console --clear           # clear the buffer
ht browser browser:1 errors                    # tail JS errors
ht browser browser:1 errors --clear

History

ht browser browser:1 history                   # list visited URLs (deduped)
ht browser browser:1 history --search "github"
ht browser browser:1 history --clear

Find in page

ht browser browser:1 find-in-page "search query"

The cancel half is RPC-only (browser.stop_find) — the cancel button lives in the browser-pane UI, not as a ht verb. See RPC-only methods.

Help

ht browser help
ht browser --help          # alias
ht browser -h              # alias

Prints the same browser-section block as the global ht --help, scoped to browser subcommands. The default error path (Unknown browser subcommand: …) tells users to run this; it points at a real command.

DevTools

ht browser browser:1 devtools                  # toggle WebKit inspector

Close

ht browser browser:1 close

Read more

• Browser panes
• JSON-RPC browser methods

Cookie commands

These are top-level hyphenated commands (not ht browser <sub>):

ht browser-cookie-list [domain]
ht browser-cookie-get <url>
ht browser-cookie-set <name> <value> --domain <d> [--path /] [--secure true]
ht browser-cookie-delete <domain> <name>
ht browser-cookie-clear [domain]
ht browser-cookie-import <file> [--format json|netscape]
ht browser-cookie-export [--format json|netscape]
ht browser-cookie-capture [--surface S]

A cookie jar is credentials — treat an export like a password file. Storage is partitioned per browserPartitionMode. See the browser.cookie_* API.

Legacy hyphenated aliases

Every ht browser <sub> verb also exists as a flat command, kept so older scripts keep working. They map to the same RPC:

ht browser-open [url]        ht browser-navigate <url>    ht browser-url
ht browser-split [url]       ht browser-back              ht browser-forward
ht browser-reload            ht browser-close             ht browser-eval <js>
ht browser-snapshot          ht browser-find <query>      ht browser-devtools
ht browser-history           ht browser-clear-history

Prefer the ht browser … form in new scripts — it is the one that gets new subcommands.