Chrome use

These rules apply to every agent that drives Pablo's Chrome: Claude in Chrome (mcp__claude-in-chrome__*), the Codex CLI's Playwright MCP browser_* tools, and the Codex desktop app's Chrome plugin (control-chrome). Where the vendor skills (claude-in-chrome, chrome-browser, control-chrome, chrome-troubleshooting) differ from them, these rules take precedence.

When to use the browser

For background web research, use the web search/browsing tool and the mapped service clients or direct public downloads (claude/context/service-access.md). Do not switch to Pablo's live Chrome because an HTTP request fails or a site presents a challenge, unless a skill's documented browser step calls for it (such as download-paper's needs-browser job).

When a task needs Pablo's logged-in accounts or a site with no other agent path, use the browser without asking: Pablo has authorized this standing use and does not want to repeat it. Each agent uses its own browser control:

• Claude: Claude in Chrome.
• Codex CLI: the playwright MCP server's browser_* tools, which drive Pablo's Chrome through the Playwright MCP Bridge extension. If they are missing, say so.
• Codex desktop app: the Chrome plugin through its control-chrome skill and browser client. Verify the connection with a read-only tab listing before navigating. A failed generic Playwright or guessed CDP connection does not show that this plugin is unavailable.

To fill in a form for Pablo, take his name, date of birth, contact details and address from /Users/pablostafforini/My Drive/dotfiles/claude/context/personal-details.md instead of asking him. Card numbers, passport numbers and passwords are not there and stay out of agent-typed fields; Pablo's permission does not change this, so do not ask for it. When a form needs one of them, say so at the start, fill in everything else, leave it unsubmitted, and tell Pablo which tab and Chrome profile window to finish it in.

Never steal focus

Pablo is working at the same machine. Never bring Chrome or one of its windows to the front.

• Get your own tab through the browser tool's own calls (Claude in Chrome: tabs_context_mcp with createIfEmpty, tabs_create_mcp). That is the normal start, needs no permission, and is allowed even when the extension puts its tab group in a new window. Never open windows any other way, and never ask to: a window does not fix a page stall.
• That includes scripts. A script that launches a visible browser (Playwright, Puppeteer or Selenium with headless=False, even on a separate profile) opens a window that takes focus. Run such scripts headless; when a login needs Pablo, do it in your own Claude in Chrome tab instead.
• Work only in your own tabs. Claude in Chrome cannot use tabs Pablo opened himself, so never offer to. When a site needs a sign-in in your tab (1Password web signs in per tab), navigate your tab there and ask Pablo to sign in in that tab, naming it and its Chrome profile window.
• Do not click links or buttons that open a new tab or window (Chrome activates them). Read the link's href and navigate your own tab to it.
• Never raise, activate or reorder Chrome windows: no AppleScript or osascript, System Events, open -a, or chrome-profile-open.
• Never fall back to screenshots of the desktop or coordinate clicking outside the browser tools.
• If a tab sits in a background window and input to it fails, or Pablo must act there (sign-in, 2FA, a permission prompt), tell him which Chrome profile window holds it, by its alias in claude/chrome-extension-profiles.json (for example tlon), and let him switch to it.

chrome-profile-open <alias> URL is only a launcher for a page Pablo asks to have opened manually; it activates Chrome. Configure its aliases with chrome-profile-open --setup <alias>. Project wrappers may call it when manual opening is the requested action. The only automated caller is the Claude hook chrome-bridge-recover.py, which uses --background.

Classify a failure before recovering

A communication failure means setup, browser selection or the tab listing (tabs_context_mcp, browser.tabs.list(), browser_tabs) fails.

• Claude: the chrome-bridge-recover hook reopens this account's Chrome profile in the background and says whether to retry. Retry while it says to; report a connection problem only once it says the profile has been open 60 s and the extension still does not answer. This replaces the vendor skills' "stop after two or three attempts".
• Codex: run the plugin's or server's documented connection checks, except any step that opens a window (such as open-chrome-window.js); skip that step. If communication still fails, fail closed and report which check failed.

Once a browser is selected and a tab exists, a navigation timeout ("Timed out waiting for tab … to navigate"), a hung page read, or js execution timed out; kernel reset is a page or REPL failure. Connection checks pass and prove nothing about it. Recover without asking: read the tab again; after a kernel reset, rerun the bootstrap and rebind the browser; then open a fresh tab from that browser and retry the navigation once. If it fails again, report it.

Challenge-protected hosts (DDoS-Guard, Cloudflare; for example Anna's Archive) can outlast the navigation's load wait while their interstitial runs, so a timeout there is expected: read the tab until its title changes before calling the page unavailable. Treat it as a communication failure only if a fresh tab listing also fails.