chrome-devtools-axi weekly downloads statistics

<h1 align="center">chrome-devtools-axi</h1> <p align="center"> <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/chrome-devtools-axi"><img alt="npm" src="https://img.shields.io/npm/v/chrome-devtools-axi?style=flat-square" /></a> <a href="https://github.com/kunchenguid/chrome-devtools-axi/actions/workflows/ci.yml"><img alt="CI" src="https://img.shields.io/github/actions/workflow/status/kunchenguid/chrome-devtools-axi/ci.yml?style=flat-square&label=CI" /></a> <a href="https://github.com/kunchenguid/chrome-devtools-axi/actions/workflows/release-please.yml"><img alt="Release" src="https://img.shields.io/github/actions/workflow/status/kunchenguid/chrome-devtools-axi/release-please.yml?style=flat-square&label=Release" /></a> <a href="#"><img alt="Platform" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/platform-macOS%20%7C%20Linux%20%7C%20Windows-blue?style=flat-square" /></a> <a href="https://x.com/kunchenguid"><img alt="X" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/X-@kunchenguid-black?style=flat-square" /></a> <a href="https://discord.gg/Wsy2NpnZDu"><img alt="Discord" src="https://img.shields.io/discord/1439901831038763092?style=flat-square&label=discord" /></a> </p> <h3 align="center">The most agent-ergonomic browser automation</h3>

chrome-devtools-axi wraps chrome-devtools-mcp with an AXI-compliant CLI.

• Token-efficient — TOON-encoded output cuts token usage ~40% vs raw JSON
• Combined operations — one command navigates, captures, and suggests next steps
• Contextual suggestions — every response includes actionable next-step hints

Benchmarks

Agent ergonomics is measurable. The axi benchmark runs the same 14 real-world browsing tasks (Wikipedia research, GitHub navigation, multi-site comparison, and more) through 7 browser automation setups - 5 repeats each, with claude-sonnet-4-6 as the agent and an LLM judge scoring task success.

chrome-devtools-axi posts the lowest input tokens, cost, duration, and turn count of all 7 conditions, with 100% task success:

Condition	Avg Input Tokens	Avg Cost/Task	Avg Duration	Avg Turns	Success
chrome-devtools-axi	79,141	$0.074	21.5s	4.5	100%
dev-browser	82,532	$0.078	28.6s	4.9	99%
agent-browser (Vercel)	93,074	$0.088	24.6s	4.8	99%
chrome-devtools-mcp + compressor CLI	130,779	$0.091	29.7s	7.6	100%
chrome-devtools-mcp + ToolSearch	133,712	$0.096	29.4s	7.5	99%
chrome-devtools-mcp (raw MCP)	184,711	$0.101	26.0s	6.2	99%
chrome-devtools-mcp code execution	129,606	$0.120	36.2s	6.4	100%

Against raw chrome-devtools-mcp - the very server this CLI wraps - that is 57% fewer input tokens, 26% lower cost, and 27% fewer agent turns.

Quick Start

Install the chrome-devtools-axi skill in the Agent Skills format with npx skills:

npx skills add kunchenguid/chrome-devtools-axi --skill chrome-devtools-axi -g

That is the entire setup - no npm install needed. The skill teaches your agent to run chrome-devtools-axi through npx -y chrome-devtools-axi, so the CLI comes along on demand.

The skill is not a user-facing slash command (user-invocable: false). Just ask for anything that needs a real browser - opening a page, clicking through a flow, extracting page content, debugging console or network, auditing performance - and the agent loads the skill on its own when it recognizes the task. For ordinary web search, curl-able pages, or static extraction, the skill tells agents to skip Chrome and use simpler fetch/curl-style tooling. The skill frontmatter also includes Hermes Agent metadata (author plus metadata.hermes tags/category) so Hermes can list it as a first-class browser automation skill; other harnesses ignore those extra fields.

-g installs the skill for all projects (~/.claude/skills/, for example); drop it to install for the current project only (.claude/skills/).

What Agent Sees

$ chrome-devtools-axi open https://example.com
page: {title: "Example Domain", url: "https://example.com", refs: 1}
snapshot:
RootWebArea "Example Domain"
  heading "Example Domain"
  paragraph "This domain is for use in illustrative examples..."
  uid=g1:1 link "More information..."
help[1]:
  Run `chrome-devtools-axi click @g1:1` to click the "More information..." link

$ chrome-devtools-axi click @g1:1
page: {title: "IANA — IANA-Managed Reserved Domains", refs: 12}
snapshot:
...

Refs in snapshot output carry a g<N>: generation prefix that bumps every time a new accessibility tree is captured. Pass refs back exactly as printed. UID actions also verify that the tracked page has not mutated since that snapshot; if freshness cannot be confirmed (including for a legacy untagged ref), they fail loudly with STALE_REF instead of silently no-op'ing, so the agent re-snapshots and retries. The skill also instructs agents to verify state-changing actions with a fresh snapshot, eval, or screenshot before reporting success, because a current ref can still produce no visible page change.

Other Ways to Install

The skill is the recommended path, but it is not the only one.

Zero setup

chrome-devtools-axi is an AXI, so any capable agent can run the CLI directly with nothing installed at all. Just tell your agent:

Execute `npx -y chrome-devtools-axi` to get browser automation tools.

Session hook…