rod

The Rod MCP server provides browser automation capabilities driven by the Go-based Rod library. It exposes a set of MCP tools that let language models or automated agents interact with web pages—for example, clicking elements, capturing screenshots, generating PDFs, and performing other common browser automation tasks. The server is designed to be headless-friendly and supports options for running with or without a GUI, as well as proxy configuration and browser customization. You can configure the server through a YAML/JSON configuration file and reference the rod-mcp executable via the provided command and arguments.

To use it, start the Rod MCP server using the configured command, typically by launching rod-mcp with a configuration file (rod-mcp.yaml). The server then exposes endpoints and tools that your LLM or automation client can invoke to perform browser actions, retrieve results (e.g., HTML content, element states, or screenshots), and chain operations together in a workflow.

Prerequisites:

• Go 1.23 or higher
• Chrome/Chromium browser

Installation steps:

1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/go-rod/rod-mcp.git cd rod-mcp

2. Install dependencies and build: go mod tidy go build

3. Prepare a configuration file (rod-mcp.yaml) with your desired settings (see Configuration section in the README).

4. Run the server (example): ./rod-mcp -c rod-mcp.yaml

Notes:

• Ensure that the browser executable path is correctly set if you’re not using the system default (see browserBinPath in the configuration).
• If you want to run in headless mode or with a proxy, configure the corresponding options in rod-mcp.yaml before starting.

Configuration tips:

• serverName: Change the server display name from the default to something meaningful for your environment.
• browserBinPath: Provide an explicit path to the Chrome/Chromium binary if needed.
• headless: Set to true to run in headless mode; false may show a GUI depending on your environment.
• browserTempDir: Location for temporary browser data; ensure the directory is writable.
• noSandbox: Disable sandboxing if you’re running in environments where sandbox is restricted.
• proxy: Configure a proxy (including SOCKS5) if your network requires it.
• rod-mcp.yaml: The configuration file referenced by -c; you can customize available options and defaults therein.

Common issues:

• Mismatched Chrome/Rod versions leading to incompatibilities – ensure compatible versions.
• Insufficient permissions for browser temp directory or config file paths.
• Network/firewall rules blocking proxy or endpoints used by automation tasks.