Automate a cloud browser with Puppeteer

Hussien Hussien, Jun RyuUpdated Apr 24, 2026

Terminal

Scaffolds a starter project locally. Requires the Steel CLI.

Puppeteer ships a connect() call that attaches to any Chrome exposing a DevTools websocket. Steel sessions expose one. Point Puppeteer at it and the rest of the script is plain Puppeteer: page.goto, page.evaluate, page.waitForSelector, the whole surface area. Stealth, proxies, and the live session viewer come from Steel without extra wiring.

session = await client.sessions.create();

browser = await puppeteer.connect({
  browserWSEndpoint: `${session.websocketUrl}&apiKey=${STEEL_API_KEY}`,
});

const page = await browser.newPage();

Two notes on the shape here. First, the package is puppeteer-core, not puppeteer. There's no Chromium to download because the browser lives on Steel. Second, browser.newPage() opens a fresh tab in the Steel session; the session viewer starts blank until you navigate.

Run it

cd examples/puppeteer-ts
cp .env.example .env          # set STEEL_API_KEY
npm install
npm start

Get a key at app.steel.dev/settings/api-keys. The script prints a session viewer URL as it starts. Open it in another tab to watch the browser run live.

Your output varies. Structure looks like this:

Creating Steel session...
Steel Session created!
View session at https://app.steel.dev/sessions/ab12cd34…

Connected to browser via Puppeteer
Navigating to Hacker News...

Top 5 Hacker News Stories:

1. Claude 4.7 Opus released today
   Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43218921
   Points: 892

2. Show HN: A browser extension for reading on slow connections
   Link: https://github.com/user/project
   Points: 401

…

Releasing session...
Session released
Done!

A run costs a few cents of browser time. Steel bills per session-minute, so the finally block that calls client.sessions.release() isn't optional. Forgetting it keeps the browser running until the default 5-minute timeout.

Make it yours

Swap the target. Replace the page.goto URL and the page.evaluate body in main(). Session setup, connect, and cleanup stay the same.
Turn on stealth. Uncomment useProxy, solveCaptcha, or sessionTimeout in the sessions.create() call for sites with anti-bot.
Persist login. Reuse cookies and local storage across runs via credentials.