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Claude in Chrome

2 min read

Claude in Chrome

Anthropic’s official Chrome extension that lets Claude Code (or claude.ai) drive your actual browser session — clicking, typing, scrolling, reading pages and console/network output — using computer-use-style control rather than a fixed automation API. Beta, rolling out to Pro/Max/Team/Enterprise plans.

Description

Browser extension exposing ~16 tools: browser control (navigate, read_page, find, computer for click/type/scroll), form interaction (form_input, javascript_tool), media (upload_image, get_page_text, gif_creator), tab management (tabs_context_mcp, tabs_create_mcp), dev tools (read_console_messages, read_network_requests), and utilities (shortcuts_list/shortcuts_execute, resize_window, update_plan). ~15.4k tokens (7.7% of a 200k context) to load the tool surface.

Download or use

  • Install from the Chrome Web Store (requires a paid Claude plan).
  • Inside Claude Code: tools are namespaced mcp__claude-in-chrome__*; call tabs_context_mcp first each session to see open tabs before creating new ones.

Reasoning for

Fills a different niche than Chrome DevTools MCP and Playwright MCP: it drives your real, already-logged-in session rather than a fresh isolated browser profile. That makes it the right tool for “does this look right while I’m logged in”, exploratory/manual-style testing, design verification (Figma vs. rendered output), and recurring/scheduled browser checks — not for CI/CD or deterministic E2E suites, since it has no headless mode and requires login.

Security posture worth knowing before pointing it at anything sensitive: reported 23.6% attack-success rate without mitigations, ~11.2% with Anthropic’s defenses (prompt-injection style attacks via page content), it uses your real cookies/session (exposure risk), and it’s blocked from financial/adult/pirated sites by policy. Never trigger JS alert/confirm/prompt dialogs through it — they block the extension until manually dismissed.

Alternatives considered

  • Chrome DevTools MCP (Google) — CDP+Puppeteer, isolated profile, deep performance/network traces, headless — better for debugging and CI.
  • Playwright MCP (Microsoft) — accessibility-tree based, cross-browser (Chromium/Firefox/WebKit), most token-efficient (~13.7k), best for deterministic E2E test generation.
  • See Chrome DevTools MCP vs Claude in Chrome vs Playwright MCP for the full side-by-side and a suggested workflow combining all three.

Resources

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