opencli — websites through the user's Chrome

opencli runs inside the user's everyday Chrome through an extension, so every request carries their real login, cookies, and browser fingerprint. Two layers:

• Adapters: opencli <site> <command>, deterministic commands that return structured data, mostly by calling the site's own API from inside the page.
• Browser primitives: opencli browser <session> <command>, to open, read, click, and type on any page.

Public pages with no login or anti-bot wall are cheaper through plain fetching; reach for opencli when one of the description's cases holds.

Pick one layer

List the site's adapters first. If one covers the task, use it and you are done; most tasks on a covered site end here. Drive the page with browser primitives only for what no adapter covers.

Adapters

opencli list -f json | jq -r '.[] | select(.site=="zhihu") | "\(.name)\t\(.access)\t\(.description)"'
opencli zhihu question --help        # args, defaults, output columns
opencli zhihu question 2087643546463613137 --limit 5 -f json

• Site keys are slugs like xiaohongshu, twitter, bilibili; list them with opencli list -f json | jq '[.[].site] | unique'.
• Pass -f json on every adapter call.
• Adapters open and close their own background tab; nothing to clean up.

Browser primitives

opencli browser t open "https://example.com/list" --window background
opencli browser t wait selector ".item" --timeout 15000
opencli browser t find --css ".item a" --limit 10        # refs, text, attrs
opencli browser t eval "(() => [...document.querySelectorAll('.item')].map(e => ({title: e.querySelector('h2')?.textContent.trim(), href: e.querySelector('a')?.href})))()"
opencli browser t click 12                               # ref from find/state, or a CSS selector
opencli browser t wait selector ".detail"
opencli browser t extract --chunk-size 8000              # page as markdown; loop on next_start_char
opencli browser t close

• One session name per task; reuse it across calls so the tab persists, and close it when done.
• --window background keeps the work out of the user's way; drop it when the user wants to watch.
• To work in a tab the user already has open (a page they logged into or set up), bind the session instead of open, and unbind at the end. opencli never closes a bound tab.
• Read with targeted queries: find --css for elements and refs, eval for structured data, extract for long text. Use state only on light pages or when you need the whole page's ref map: on heavy pages (Reddit, web-component UIs) it exceeds 60k tokens.
• After any navigation or page-changing action, wait before reading again; refs from the previous page are void.
• eval is for reading; make changes with click, type, fill, select, keys.
• network lists the JSON the page fetched (--detail <key> for one body). It pays off on API-driven SPAs; server-rendered pages have no data requests to capture.
• Per-command flags: opencli browser <s> <command> --help.

Writes act on the user's real accounts

Adapter commands with access: write (post, comment, reply, like, follow, favorite, subscribe, delete…) and any browser action that submits, posts, or sends act publicly as the user. State exactly what will happen and get the user's confirmation before running one. Reads need no confirmation.

Failures