parallel-playwright-mcp

parallel-playwright-mcp

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for browser automation via Playwright, implemented in Go. Designed for AI agents that need to drive multiple browser sessions in parallel — each session has its own isolated context with separate cookies, storage, and navigation history.

Key capabilities:

• Parallel sessions — one MCP connection can manage many independent browser sessions across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit
• Full browser control — navigate, click, type, screenshot, extract text, evaluate JavaScript, and more
• Streamable HTTP transport — communicates over HTTP using the MCP Streamable HTTP protocol, no stdio piping required
• Configurable — YAML config with environment variable overrides for host, port, timeouts, browser flags, and logging
• Docker-ready — single-stage Dockerfile bundles the server binary and all Playwright browser dependencies

Prerequisites

• Go 1.25+
• Task (recommended task runner)

Quick Start

# Install dependencies and Playwright browsers
task setup

# Run the server (builds automatically)
task run

The server starts on http://127.0.0.1:3000 by default.

Docker

# Build image and run container
task docker:run

# Run with a minimal tool set
task docker:run:min-tools

# Run with custom config
task docker:run MCP_CONFIG_PATH=./custom.yaml

Manual Setup

go mod download
go run github.com/mxschmitt/playwright-go/cmd/playwright install --with-deps
go build -o bin/playwright-mcp-server ./cmd/server
./bin/playwright-mcp-server

MCP Tools

Session Management

Tool	Description
session_create	Create a new isolated browser session
session_list	List all active browser sessions for this connection
session_close	Close a browser session and release its resources

Navigation

Tool	Description
navigate	Navigate to a URL
go_back	Go back in browser history
go_forward	Go forward in browser history
reload	Reload the current page

Interaction

Tool	Description
click	Click an element on the page
type	Type text into an element with keystroke events
fill	Fill an input field with text (fast, no keystroke events)
select_option	Select an option from a dropdown
hover	Hover over an element
press_key	Press a keyboard key or key combination

Inspection & Extraction

Tool	Description
screenshot	Capture a PNG screenshot of the page or a specific element
extract_text	Extract visible text from the page in hierarchical structure
get_html	Get HTML source of the page or an element
evaluate	Execute a JavaScript expression in the page context
query_selector	Query element info by CSS selector
get_accessibility_tree	Get an accessibility snapshot of the page
get_links	Get all hyperlinks from the page with IDs and labels
get_console_logs	Retrieve browser console log messages
get_network_logs	Retrieve captured network request/response logs
navigate_and_extract_text	Navigate to a URL and extract visible text as markdown (creates a temporary session)

Tools can be restricted at startup with the enabled_tools config option or MCP_ENABLED_TOOLS environment variable.

Task Targets

Target	Description
task setup	Install Go deps and Playwright browsers
task run	Build and run the server
task build	Build the server binary to bin/
task test	Run unit tests
task test:e2e	Run E2E tests (requires Playwright browsers)
task lint	Run go vet and go fmt
task check	Run lint + test + build
task docker:build	Build the Docker image
task docker:run	Build and run in Docker
task clean	Remove build artifacts

Run task --list for the complete list.

Configuration

The server loads configuration from config.yaml (or the path in MCP_CONFIG_PATH) with environment variable overrides:

Variable	Override	Default
MCP_HOST	Server bind address	127.0.0.1
MCP_PORT	Server port	3000
MCP_BROWSER_HEADLESS	Headless mode	true
MCP_LOG_LEVEL	Log level (debug/info/warn/error)	info
MCP_TIMEOUT_DEFAULT	Default timeout (ms)	30000
MCP_TIMEOUT_NAVIGATION	Navigation timeout (ms)	30000
MCP_TIMEOUT_ELEMENT	Element wait timeout (ms)	5000
MCP_ENABLED_TOOLS	Comma-separated list of enabled tools	all tools

See config.yaml for the full configuration reference.