browser-probe

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

2 scripts

Probe a URL with escalating headless browser configurations to detect CDN bot protection (Akamai, Cloudflare, DataDome, AWS WAF) and produce a browser-recipe.json that downstream playwright-cli consumers use to bypass blocking. Runs an automated escalation ladder: default headless → stealth script injection → system Chrome (TLS fingerprint fix) → persistent profile. Use BEFORE any playwright-cli interaction with an untrusted domain. Triggers on: browser probe, site blocked, headless blocked, CDN blocking, bot detection, browser recipe, can't load page, 403 error page, access denied.

5installs

Sourceadobe/skills

Added on2026-08-14

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add adobe/skills browser-probe

SKILL.md Content

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Browser Probe

Detect CDN bot protection blocking headless Chrome and produce a browser recipe for downstream

playwright-cli

consumers. Node 22+ required. No npm dependencies.

When to Use

Run before any

playwright-cli

interaction with an untested domain, or when a downstream script reports a blocked/empty page (403, "access denied", "captcha").

Script Location

bash

if [[ -n "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR:-}" ]]; then
  PROBE_DIR="${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts"
else
  PROBE_DIR="$(dirname "$(command -v browser-probe.js 2>/dev/null || \
    find ~/.claude -path "*/browser-probe/scripts/browser-probe.js" \
    -type f 2>/dev/null | head -1)")"
fi

Workflow

Step 1 — Run the probe

bash

node "$PROBE_DIR/browser-probe.js" "$URL" "$OUTPUT_DIR"

The script tries up to 5 browser configurations, stopping at the first success:

default — headless Chromium (baseline)
stealth — headless Chromium + JS stealth init script (patches
```
navigator.webdriver
```
, plugins, languages)
stealth-ua — headless Chromium + JS stealth + User-Agent override (removes
```
HeadlessChrome
```
from HTTP UA header via
```
--user-agent
```
launch arg)
chrome — system Chrome (
```
--browser=chrome
```
) + JS stealth + UA override (fixes TLS fingerprint detection)
persistent — system Chrome + JS stealth + UA override + persistent profile (cookie/session challenges)

Output:

$OUTPUT_DIR/probe-report.json

Step 2 — Read the report

Load

probe-report.json

. Check

firstSuccess

:

If non-null: a configuration worked. Proceed to Step 3.
If null: all configurations failed. Skip to Step 5.

Step 3 — Interpret results

Match

detectedSignals

against the Provider Signature Table in

references/stealth-config.md

to confirm why blocking occurred and validate that

firstSuccess

is the minimum sufficient config.

Step 4 — Generate recipe

Write

browser-recipe.json

to

$OUTPUT_DIR

:

json

{
  "url": "<probed URL>",
  "generated": "<ISO timestamp>",
  "cliConfig": {
    "browser": {
      "browserName": "chromium",
      "launchOptions": { "channel": "<from firstSuccess step>" }
    }
  },
  "stealthInitScript": "<full script from stealth-config.md if stealth was needed>",
  "notes": "<1-2 sentence explanation of what was detected and why this config>"
}

Config mapping from
firstSuccess
:

firstSuccess	channel	args	stealthInitScript
`default`	—	—	null
`stealth`	—	—	from reference
`stealth-ua`	—	`--user-agent=<realistic UA>`	from reference
`chrome`	`chrome`	`--user-agent=<realistic UA>`	from reference
`persistent`	`chrome`	`--user-agent=<realistic UA>`	from reference

If

firstSuccess

is

persistent

, add

"persistent": true

to the recipe.

Step 5 — Report results

If a configuration worked:

Browser probe complete for <url>.
  Working config: <firstSuccess>
  Detected: <detectedSignals or "no bot protection detected">
  Recipe: <path to browser-recipe.json>

If all configurations failed:

Browser probe failed for <url>. No headless configuration could load the page.
  Tried: default, stealth, stealth-ua, chrome, persistent
  Detected signals: <detectedSignals>

  Options:
  1. Use --headed flag for manual browser interaction
  2. Provide pre-captured data (DOM snapshot, screenshots) manually
  3. Check if the URL requires authentication or VPN access

Do NOT produce a recipe when all steps fail. Do NOT silently continue with a broken configuration.

How Consumers Use the Recipe

Pass

--config=<path-to-cliConfig>

to

playwright-cli open

. If the recipe has

stealthInitScript

, add it to

browser.initScript

in the config (not via

eval

— eval is expression-only). If

"persistent": true

, also pass

--persistent

. Run

playwright-cli --help

for the full command reference.