Browser Tools for AI Agents
4 parts in this series
1
Browser Tools for AI Agents Part 1: Playwright, Puppeteer, and Why Your Agent Picked Playwright
The low-level browser automation tools. Why Playwright won the agent war, what dev-browser does differently, and when you need Patchright or Scrapling for the dodgy stuff.
2
Browser Tools for AI Agents Part 2: The Framework Wars (browser-use, Stagehand, Skyvern)
Agent browser frameworks compared. DOM-first vs vision-first, the caching trick that changes economics, and why expect is a completely different thing.
3
Browser Tools for AI Agents Part 3: Managed Infrastructure and When DIY Stops Making Sense
Firecrawl, Browserbase, Steel, Bright Data, and Browserless compared. Pricing, self-hosted options, and the honest crossover point where managed beats DIY.
4
Browser Tools for AI Agents Part 4: Skip the Browser, Save 80% on Tokens
Content extraction without a browser. markdown.new, Jina Reader, Trafilatura, and the maths that proves parsing HTML is burning money.