First automation (CLI)

This is the human on-ramp: a handful of real bl commands that navigate a page, capture it, find elements, and interact with them. If you haven't installed browserlane yet, start with Install.

Visible by default

Every command below opens a real Chrome in a visible, maximized window so you can watch what happens and debug the automation as it runs.

Open a page

bl open https://example.com

bl open <url> navigates to the URL (a bare host like example.com gets https:// prepended) and prints basic page info. Run bare bl open with no URL and it just launches a local browser on about:blank. Either way the browser stays open between commands, so the next command acts on this same page.

Capture a screenshot

bl screenshot -o page.png

Without -o, the file is named screenshot.png in the current directory. Add --full-page to capture the whole page instead of just the viewport.

Map the interactive elements

bl map

bl map lists the page's interactive elements and assigns each a short ref like @e1, @e2. You then act on those refs directly — no CSS selectors required.

Click something

bl click @e1

bl click accepts either a ref from bl map or a CSS selector (bl click "a"). It auto-waits for the element to be actionable before clicking. After anything that changes the page, run bl map again — refs from the old page no longer apply.

Read the page text

bl text

bl text prints the page's text content. Pass a selector to scope it, e.g. bl text "h1".

Find an element semantically

bl find text "More information"

bl find locates elements without a CSS selector. Beyond text, it supports role, label, placeholder, testid, alt, title, and xpath. Each match comes back as a ref you can act on:

bl find role button        # → @e1 [button] "Submit"
bl click @e1

Assert page state

bl expect title contains "Example"

bl expect turns a check into a pass/fail verdict: it prints PASS expect title contains "Example" and exits 0 when the assertion holds, or reports the actual value and exits 1. You can assert the URL, title, text, element state (visible / hidden / enabled / checked), a form value, an element count, or any JavaScript expression — the building block for scripted flows and CI checks.

Run JavaScript

bl eval "document.title"

bl eval is the escape hatch for anything the CLI doesn't cover directly — any DOM query or mutation. The expression's result is printed; use --stdin to pipe in longer scripts and avoid shell-quoting headaches.

Chaining commands

Because each command acts on the same open page, you can chain a sequence with && — it stops on the first error:

bl open https://example.com && bl map && bl click @e1 && bl map

Run commands separately when you need to read one command's output before deciding what to do next (for example, reading bl map to pick which ref to click).

Where to go next

Learn the map → act → re-map loop in Selectors, refs, and the map/act/re-map loop.
Understand auto-waiting vs. explicit waits.
Browse every command in the CLI reference.

First automation (CLI)

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