Devtools MCP Server Overview

The Devtools MCP server bridges the gap between large language models (LLMs) and the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP), giving AI assistants direct, programmatic control over a running instance of Chrome. By exposing CDP as an MCP tool, developers can let LLMs perform complex browser interactions—navigating pages, evaluating JavaScript, capturing screenshots, and more—without writing any browser automation code themselves.

At its core, the server offers a single tool. An LLM can issue any CDP command by specifying the method name (for example, or ) and an optional JSON string of parameters. The server forwards this request to the Chrome instance that was launched with remote debugging enabled, then streams back the response. When a command returns large binary payloads—such as screenshots or PDF documents—the server automatically writes the data to disk under and returns a file path reference instead of raw binary. This eliminates the need for LLMs to handle complex encoding schemes or large data blobs.

Key features include:

• Universal CDP access – any command supported by the DevTools Protocol can be invoked, enabling a wide range of browser automation tasks.
• Automatic binary handling – large responses are persisted to files, simplifying downstream processing and keeping the LLM’s payload small.
• Simple integration – once added as an MCP server, the tool can be invoked from any AI assistant that understands MCP, such as Claude or other LLM platforms.
• Secure local execution – the server runs locally, connecting to a Chrome instance that you control, ensuring data privacy and compliance.

Typical use cases span automated testing, web scraping, performance monitoring, and dynamic content generation. For instance, a QA engineer can ask an LLM to navigate to a page, run custom JavaScript, and capture the rendered DOM as a screenshot—all through natural language prompts. Similarly, a content creator could instruct an LLM to generate and export PDFs from web pages or capture visual snapshots for documentation.

By abstracting the intricacies of CDP, Devtools MCP empowers developers to harness browser automation directly from conversational AI workflows. This tight coupling reduces boilerplate, accelerates prototyping, and opens new possibilities for AI-driven web interaction at scale.