Browser Control MCP

An MCP server paired with a browser extension that enables LLM clients, such as Claude Desktop, to control the user's local browser (Firefox).

Features

The MCP server supports the following tools:

• Open or close tabs
• Get the list of opened tabs
• Reorder opened tabs
• Read and search the browser's history
• Read webpages text content and links
• Find and highlight text in a browser tab

Example use-cases:

• "Close all non-work related tabs in my browser."
• "Rearrange tabs in my browser in an order that makes sense."
• "Help me find an article in my browser history about the Milford track in NZ."
• "Open hackernews in my browser, then open the top story, read it, also read the comments. Do the comments agree with the story?"
• "In my browser, use Google Scholar to search for papers about L-theanine in the last 3 years. Open the 3 most cited works."

Installation

Clone this repository, then run the following commands to build both the MCP server and the browser extension.

npm install
npm install --prefix mcp-server
npm install --prefix firefox-extension
npm run build

The final npm run build command should be executed in the main repository directory, as it also generates a shared config.json file used by both the server and the extension.

Usage with Claude Desktop:

Add the following configuration to claude_desktop_config.json (use the Edit Config button in Claude Desktop Developer settings):

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "browser-control": {
            "command": "node",
            "args": [
                "<path to repo>/mcp-server/dist/server.js"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Replace <path to repo> with the correct path.

Make sure to restart Claude Desktop.

Usage with Firefox

The browser-control-mcp extension was developed for Firefox.

To install the extension:

1. Type about:debugging in the Firefox URL bar
2. Click on "This Firefox"
3. click on "Load Temporary Add-on..."
4. Select the manifest.json file under the firefox-extension folder in this project

If you prefer not to run the extension on your personal Firefox browser, an alternative is to download a separate Firefox instance (such as Firefox Developer Edition, available at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/).