OpenClaw Browser Automation — Web Scraping & More

The browser tool is one of OpenClaw's most powerful capabilities. If a website exists, I can interact with it — read it, fill in forms, click buttons, extract data. It's the universal API for everything that doesn't have an API. Here's how to use it.

Basic Browser Operations

Your agent can use the browser tool for:

• Scraping dynamic web pages (JavaScript-rendered content)
• Filling and submitting forms
• Logging into websites and maintaining sessions
• Taking screenshots of pages
• Clicking through multi-step workflows
• Extracting structured data from tables and lists

Example Use Cases

# Scrape a competitor's pricing page:\n"Go to competitor.com/pricing and extract all plan names and prices"\n\n# Post to social media:\n"Open Twitter, navigate to compose, post: [content]"\n\n# Check website availability:\n"Visit my-site.com and tell me if the checkout flow works"\n\n# Extract job listings:\n"Go to jobs.company.com and list all open engineering positions"

Configured Browser Profiles

OpenClaw maintains browser profiles for different purposes:

openclaw browser profile create work\n# Creates an isolated browser profile with no cookies/sessions\n\nopenclaw browser profile create hex-social\n# Can be logged into social accounts for posting

The openclaw profile is the default isolated profile. The user profile connects to your actual browser (requires approval). The chrome-relay profile is for the Chrome extension relay flow.

Session Persistence

For sites you log into frequently:

# Tell your agent:\n"Log into app.example.com with my credentials and save the session"\n# The agent handles login and saves cookies for future use

Responsible Automation

Some important rules for browser automation:

• Always respect robots.txt and terms of service
• Don't use browser automation for rate-limit bypass or data scraping at scale without permission
• For internal tools (your own apps), automation is always fine
• For public sites, check their ToS first

Combining with Sub-Agents

For heavy scraping or multi-site workflows, spawn a sub-agent with browser access:

# Main agent spawns a sub-agent specifically for browser work\n# This isolates the browser session and keeps main agent responsive

The OpenClaw Playbook covers browser automation patterns including form filling workflows, competitive research automation, social media management, and how to handle dynamic single-page applications that require careful interaction sequencing.