Steel

Steel is a browser API for building AI apps and agents that act on the web. Rather than assembling session handling, proxies and stealth measures around a headless Chrome yourself, you call an API and let Steel keep the browser processes alive and clean.

Underneath, it drives Chrome through Puppeteer and the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and you can connect using Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium. Sessions hold state, cookies and local storage across requests, and request logging plus a session viewer are there when a run needs debugging.

The infrastructure you would otherwise build yourself comes with it.

• Session management: browser state kept across requests, with automatic cleanup and lifecycle handling.
• Proxy support: a built-in proxy chain for IP rotation.
• Anti-detection: stealth plugins and fingerprint management.
• Extensions: custom Chrome extensions loaded into a session.
• Page tools: endpoints that turn a page into markdown, readability text, a screenshot or a PDF.

A pre-built Docker image serves the API and UI on one port with a second for the console debugger, and one click deploys exist for Railway and Render. Running from Node.js instead needs Chrome installed at a known path. The project describes itself as being in public beta and evolving daily.