{"name":"PinchTab: High-Performance Browser Automation for AI Agents","description":"PinchTab is a high-performance browser automation bridge and multi-instance orchestrator, designed to give AI agents direct control over Chrome. Built in Go, it offers advanced stealth injection, real-time dashboards, and token-efficient web interaction. It supports both headless and headed modes, enabling robust and secure automation workflows for various applications.","github":"https://github.com/pinchtab/pinchtab","url":"https://osrepos.com/repo/pinchtab-pinchtab","source":"osrepos.com","sourceDescription":"This repository profile is provided by osrepos.com, an open source repository discovery platform.","repositoryProfile":"https://osrepos.com/repo/pinchtab-pinchtab","generatedFor":"open source discovery and AI-assisted research","markdown":"https://osrepos.com/repo/pinchtab-pinchtab.md","json":"https://osrepos.com/repo/pinchtab-pinchtab.json","topics":["browser-automation","Go","headless-chrome","web-scraping","AI agents","orchestration","stealth","CDP"],"keywords":["browser-automation","Go","headless-chrome","web-scraping","AI agents","orchestration","stealth","CDP"],"stars":null,"summary":"PinchTab is a high-performance browser automation bridge and multi-instance orchestrator, designed to give AI agents direct control over Chrome. Built in Go, it offers advanced stealth injection, real-time dashboards, and token-efficient web interaction. It supports both headless and headed modes, enabling robust and secure automation workflows for various applications.","content":"## Introduction\n\nPinchTab is a high-performance browser automation bridge and multi-instance orchestrator, specifically designed to empower AI agents with direct control over Chrome. It operates as a standalone HTTP server, providing a token-efficient way for agents to navigate pages, extract structured content, and interact with the DOM without relying on raw HTML or images. Built in Go, PinchTab is a small, self-contained binary that emphasizes a local-first security posture, making it ideal for secure, single-user control while also supporting advanced remote and distributed deployments.\n\nIt enables a wide range of applications, from headless and headed navigation for data extraction and testing, to managing multiple isolated Chrome instances for complex distributed automation tasks.\n\n## Installation\n\nGetting started with PinchTab is straightforward. Choose the method that best suits your environment:\n\n**macOS / Linux:**\n\nbash\ncurl -fsSL https://pinchtab.com/install.sh | bash\n\n\n**Homebrew (macOS / Linux):**\n\nbash\nbrew install pinchtab/tap/pinchtab\n\n\n**npm:**\n\nbash\nnpm install -g pinchtab\n\n\n**Docker:**\n\nFor containerized environments, you can run PinchTab with Docker:\n\nbash\ndocker run -d \\\n  --name pinchtab \\\n  -p 127.0.0.1:9867:9867 \\\n  -v pinchtab-data:/data \\\n  --shm-size=2g \\\n  pinchtab/pinchtab\n\n\nFor daily local use, it is recommended to install the daemon once to keep PinchTab running in the background:\n\nbash\npinchtab daemon install\npinchtab daemon\n\n\n## Examples\n\nPinchTab offers both a powerful CLI and a flexible HTTP API for controlling browser instances.\n\n### CLI Usage\n\n**First useful command, auto-starts the local server if needed:**\n\nbash\npinchtab nav https://pinchtab.com --snap\n\n\n**Recommended for daily local use, install the daemon once:**\n\nbash\npinchtab daemon install\npinchtab daemon\n\n\n**Control the browser from another terminal:**\n\nbash\n# Navigate, starts the server automatically if needed\npinchtab nav https://pinchtab.com\n\n# Get page structure\npinchtab snap -i -c\n\n# Click an element\npinchtab click e5\n\n# Extract text\npinchtab text\n\n\n### HTTP API Usage\n\nYou can also interact directly with the HTTP API:\n\nbash\n# Create a profile first (returns profile id)\nPROF=$(curl -s -X POST http://localhost:9867/profiles \\\n  -H \"Content-Type: application/json\" \\\n  -d '{\"name\":\"work\"}' | jq -r '.id')\n\n# Start an instance for that profile (returns instance id)\nINST=$(curl -s -X POST http://localhost:9867/instances/start \\\n  -H \"Content-Type: application/json\" \\\n  -d \"{\\\"profileId\\\":\\\"$PROF\\\",\\\"mode\\\":\\\"headless\\\"}\" | jq -r '.id')\n\n# Open a tab in that instance\nTAB=$(curl -s -X POST http://localhost:9867/instances/$INST/tabs/open \\\n  -H \"Content-Type: application/json\" \\\n  -d '{\"url\":\"https://pinchtab.com\"}' | jq -r '.tabId')\n\n# Get snapshot\ncurl \"http://localhost:9867/tabs/$TAB/snapshot?filter=interactive\"\n\n# Click element\ncurl -X POST \"http://localhost:9867/tabs/$TAB/action\" \\\n  -H \"Content-Type: application/json\" \\\n  -d '{\"kind\":\"click\",\"ref\":\"e5\"}'\n\n\n## Why Use PinchTab?\n\nPinchTab stands out for its robust feature set and performance optimizations, making it an excellent choice for browser automation, especially for AI agents:\n\n*   **Token Performance:** Highly efficient, extracting text with approximately 800 tokens per page, significantly cheaper than screenshot-based methods.\n*   **Headless and Headed Modes:** Supports both invisible headless Chrome for background tasks and visible headed Chrome for interactive workflows.\n*   **Persistent Profiles:** Manage browser state, including cookies and history, allowing agents to maintain logged-in sessions across restarts.\n*   **Advanced CDP Control:** Offers fine-grained control over Chrome DevTools Protocol.\n*   **Multi-instance Orchestration:** Run multiple parallel Chrome processes with isolated profiles, ideal for distributed tasks and testing.\n*   **Self-contained Binary:** A small, ~15MB Go binary with no external dependencies, simplifying deployment.\n*   **Accessibility-first:** Uses stable element references instead of fragile coordinates for reliable interaction.\n*   **ARM64-optimized:** First-class support for ARM64 architectures, including Raspberry Pi.\n\nBenchmarking against other agent-browser solutions shows PinchTab significantly reduces token costs and requests, with cost savings widening for longer workloads.\n\nPinchTab is also committed to privacy, operating as a fully open-source, local-first tool with no telemetry or analytics.\n\n## Links\n\n*   **Official Documentation:** [https://pinchtab.com/docs](https://pinchtab.com/docs)\n*   **GitHub Repository:** [https://github.com/pinchtab/pinchtab](https://github.com/pinchtab/pinchtab)","metrics":{"detailViews":3,"githubClicks":1},"dates":{"published":null,"modified":"2026-06-20T23:07:57.000Z"}}