FAQ
Common questions. Don’t see yours? Open an issue.
Is Browy free?
Section titled “Is Browy free?”Yes. Browy is open source under Apache-2.0. The code, the host, and the extension are free.
You bring your own GitHub Copilot subscription for the LLM. If you already have Copilot (free tier or paid), Browy adds nothing on top. The same Copilot quota you already use in your editor or in the terminal.
How does Browy compare to Browser-Use?
Section titled “How does Browy compare to Browser-Use?”Both are open-source browser-automation agents. Different deployment model:
| Browy | Browser-Use | |
|---|---|---|
| Surface | Browser extension (Chrome / Edge / Brave) | Python library |
| Runs against | Your real logged-in browser profile | Fresh Playwright sandbox |
| LLM | Your GitHub Copilot subscription | Your OpenAI / Anthropic / etc. API key |
| UI | Side panel chat + DevTools CLI | Programmatic |
| Best for | Day-to-day tab automation, “do this with my logged-in account” tasks | Headless scraping, batch jobs, CI |
Browy’s main draw is session reuse: your cookies, your logins, your password manager, your other extensions. You don’t re-auth into Gmail, Slack, or GitHub for every task.
How does Browy compare to Skyvern?
Section titled “How does Browy compare to Skyvern?”Skyvern is an open-source browser-automation tool with a hosted SaaS option. Browy runs locally as a Chrome extension plus a native messaging host. If you want a turnkey hosted product, pick Skyvern. If you want an extension that drives your real browser profile from chat, pick Browy.
Is Browy an alternative to Aider / Cline / Cursor?
Section titled “Is Browy an alternative to Aider / Cline / Cursor?”No, they’re complementary. Aider, Cline, and Cursor edit a repository on your disk; Browy drives your browser. Use a coding agent for code, Browy for the tabs. If you want filesystem and shell access from Browy as well, you can opt the host tools (bash, read_file, write_file, …) on under Settings → Tools, but a dedicated coding agent will give you a much better editing flow.
Does Browy work offline?
Section titled “Does Browy work offline?”No. The LLM (GitHub Copilot) runs in the cloud. The browser-control side runs entirely on your machine.
If you want a fully air-gapped setup, swap Copilot for a local model. We don’t support that today, but the agent loop is decoupled from the LLM client; a local-model fork is plausible.
What browsers are supported?
Section titled “What browsers are supported?”Chromium-based: Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, and most others. Safari and Firefox are not supported (different extension model + no chrome.debugger equivalent for cross-tab CDP).
What models can Browy use?
Section titled “What models can Browy use?”Any model your Copilot subscription exposes, currently Claude Opus 4.7, Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.5, GPT-5.4, Codex variants, Gemini, and Llama families. Switch on the fly with /model in the DevTools CLI or in Settings.
Where does my data go?
Section titled “Where does my data go?”- Page content the agent reads → GitHub Copilot, the same path as
gh copilotin a terminal - Tool calls (clicks, typed text, evaluated JS) → executed locally in your browser via
chrome.debugger - Session history → stored locally in
chrome.storage.local(extension) and~/.browy/host/(native host logs)
Full detail at Privacy & Data.
Can I disable specific tools?
Section titled “Can I disable specific tools?”Yes. Open the extension Settings → Tools. Every browser tool is on by default and can be toggled off; the disabled ones are stripped from the prompt the model sees. Host tools (bash, read_file, write_file, grep, glob, web_fetch) are off by default and can be opted into per-tool. See Tools.
Can I run Browy without opening a browser tab?
Section titled “Can I run Browy without opening a browser tab?”Not today. Browy is a browser agent: every tool it has acts on a live tab via chrome.debugger. If you want a terminal-only Copilot agent, the GitHub Copilot CLI covers that case directly.
Is Browy a competitor to GitHub Copilot?
Section titled “Is Browy a competitor to GitHub Copilot?”No. Browy is built on top of GitHub Copilot. We use the @github/copilot-sdk for LLM access; Browy adds the browser-control loop and UI surfaces on top of the agent that GitHub already ships.
Can I contribute?
Section titled “Can I contribute?”Yes, Apache-2.0, contributions welcome. See Roadmap & contributing and the GitHub project board. Issues tagged good first issue are the entry point.
Where do I report a bug?
Section titled “Where do I report a bug?”github.com/BrowyHQ/browy/issues: please include OS, browser, Browy version (browy --version), and the host log at ~/.browy/host/host.log.