gmickel/flow-next-drive

Codex note — Browser Use vs this skill: Codex desktop (v0.124+) bundles a Browser Use plugin (invoke $browser-use <task>) controlling its in-app browser. Scope is narrow: localhost, 127.0.0.1, ::1, file://, current in-app tab. No cookies, no auth, no extensions, no production sites, no Electron apps, no mobile sims. For those narrow cases, delegate: use $browser-use directly, or just describe the task in prose (Codex routes natural-language plugin calls). Use this skill (the prose triggers listed above — check the page, verify UI, test this app, etc.) for everything outside that scope — production sites, authenticated flows, cookies/saved sessions, Electron / native apps, iOS Simulator, proxies, headed browsers, video recording, visual diff. In Codex CLI (no desktop app, no in-app browser), always use this skill — Browser Use is not available there.

flow-next-drive — surface-aware UI automation

Drive any UI surface the way a real user would. Whatever driver the environment has, the work is the same shape: observe / navigate → snapshot → act on fresh refs → capture evidence → release. This skill is a router: it detects the surface, picks the highest available driver on a ladder, degrades gracefully when a richer driver is absent, and hands off to a per-rung reference for the command detail.

It orchestrates drivers — it does not reimplement them. The default rung (Vercel's agent-browser CLI) is the only driver assumed present; every other rung is detected and optional. A pass must succeed with whatever the environment actually has — most cloud VMs, Linux, and CI have no Computer Use, so it is never a hard dependency and never on a headless/no-display path.

Driver ladder + universal-flow structure adapted from Ray Fernando's running-bug-review-board skill (Apache-2.0) — see CHANGELOG.

Step 1 — Detect the surface, then branch

Classify the target into one of three buckets and take the matching path. The universal flow (Step 2) is shared; only the actuation and the per-surface reference differ.

| # | Surface | What it is | Path | |---|---------|------------|------| | A | Web app | A URL in a browser (localhost dev server, staging, production) | Web ladder (Step 3) | | B | Chromium-backed desktop app | Electron / Windows WebView2 — Chromium under the hood, exposes a CDP debug port | Web ladder (Step 3), attaching over CDP to the app's remote-debugging port | | C | True-native / non-CDP surface | macOS AppKit/SwiftUI, Catalyst, or a webview exposing no CDP (macOS WKWebView, which Tauri uses on macOS) | Native rung (Step 4) → Computer Use |

How to decide:

• A bare URL, or a dev/staging/prod web app → A.
• A desktop app you can launch with --remote-debugging-port=<n> (or one already exposing one) → B. Electron and Windows WebView2 are Chromium; the web ladder drives them by CDP-attach. Do not route these to Computer Use.
• A desktop app with no CDP port — genuinely native (AppKit/SwiftUI), or a macOS WKWebView / Tauri-on-macOS app — → C. Per-platform caveat: Windows WebView2 is CDP-drivable (→ B); macOS WKWebView generally is not (→ C) — verify per platform.

When unsure whether a desktop app exposes CDP, probe for B first (try to launch/attach with a debug port). If no port is reachable, fall to C.

Step 2 — The universal flow (all surfaces)

observe / list what's open
navigate to the target (URL, or focus the app window)
snapshot → fresh element refs (REQUIRED before each act)
act → click / fill / type / press / scroll toward the next step
verify → confirm the expected text / state appeared
capture → screenshot + console/errors at the moment of interest (and on failure)
release → close the tab / end the session when fully done

Refs (@e1, @e2, …) go stale after any navigation, click, or form submit. Always re-snapshot. "Element X has pointer-events: none" or "ref not found" almost always means a stale snapshot, not a real bug — re-snapshot before concluding.

Step 3 — Web ladder (surfaces A and B)

Probe availability top-down and use the highest rung that passes; fail soft to the next; the terminal rung is manual. Never hard-depend on any rung above the default.

| Rung | Driver | Use when | Reference | |------|--------|----------|-----------| | 1 (default) | agent-browser CLI | Always assumed present. CDP-based, headless-safe, no extra install. Drives web apps; drives Electron / WebView2 over CDP (--cdp <port> / --auto-connect). | references/agent-browser.md | | 2 | chrome-devtools-mcp | You want built-in auto-wait (fewer stale-ref failures), DevTools-grade network/console inspection, Lighthouse, or to attach to your real signed-in Chrome (--browser-url / --autoConnect) so bot defenses don't challenge an automated profile. | references/chrome-devtools-mcp.md | | 3 | Playwright (CLI or MCP) | The repo already has Playwright configured, or you need a headless CI-style run / large cross-browser regression suite. | references/playwright.md | | 4 | cursor-ide-browser MCP | Running inside Cursor with this MCP installed and you want its snapshot YAML + browser_cdp control. | references/cursor-ide-browser.md | | 5 (terminal) | Manual + screenshot relay | No browser driver available — drive yourself, paste console errors and screenshots into chat. | — |

Surface B note: the SAME ladder drives Electron / WebView2 apps — attach to the app's remote-debugging port (agent-browser --cdp <port> / --auto-connect; chrome-devtools-mcp --browser-url=http://127.0.0.1:<port>). Launch the app with a dedicated debug port and a dedicated user-data-dir; treat the open debug port as a security exposure (any local app can drive that session).

agent-browser command detail lives in the rung reference, not here. The default-rung reference references/agent-browser.md is the entry point — setup/version check, the universal flow in agent-browser commands, the Chromium-desktop (Electron / WebView2) CDP driver, the --headed daemon-reuse gotcha, and an index into the per-topic references it folds: commands.md, advanced.md (CDP attach), auth.md, snapshot-refs.md, session-management.md, proxy.md, debugging.md.

Step 4 — Native rung (surface C): Computer Use

A genuinely native app (or a non-CDP webview) has no browser tab to attach to. The only way to drive it is Computer Use — the model looks at the screen, moves a cursor, clicks, and types. Driver-agnostic across what the host offers: Codex Computer Use (macOS/Windows) and/or Anthropic "Claude" Computer Use (the API computer tool, run via its own harness — a controlled display/sandbox or an MCP wrapper). Detect availability and use whichever the environment provides; verify the tool/beta-header version at build (it drifts).

The actuation differs from the web ladder but the universal flow (Step 2) is identical — observe → act → verify → capture, described as goal + success state, not pixel coordinates.

→ Read references/computer-use.md for availability detection, the enable/permission walkthrough, the driving loop, safety/hygiene, and the full graceful-degradation table.

Driver detection & graceful degradation (all surfaces)

1. Probe, don't assume. Detect each non-default rung before planning around it (command -v, MCP list, uname -s for macOS-only Computer Use). Treat anything above the default rung as probably absent.
2. Pick the highest rung that passes; fail soft to the next. The terminal rung is always manual / documented-limitation — the pass still completes.
3. Computer Use is never required and never on a headless/CI path. Most VMs/Linux/CI lack it.
4. Graceful degradation when no Computer Use is present:

• A Chromium-backed app (B) still drives via the web-ladder CDP attach (Step 3), or by driving its local dev-server URL in a browser. Note that shell-level integration (system tray, native menus, OS dialogs) can't be reached this way — surface that limitation.
• A genuinely native app (C) with no Computer Use → document the limitation rather than fail.

5. agent-browser stays the only assumed-present driver. No MCP server or Computer Use is ever a hard install dependency.

Boundaries

• iOS / iPadOS app driving is out of scope — defer to the community iOS simulator skills. Never spin up an iOS simulator for a web-only app.
• This skill provides driver/actuation + the surface conditional. The full native-desktop QA workflow (scenario authoring, bug filing, verdict) is a downstream /flow-next:qa concern.
• Don't reinvent what a driver already does (Playwright, Computer Use) — orchestrate, don't replace.