Browser Control MCP server

The Browser Control MCP server integrates with Claude Desktop and Firefox to allow language models to control your browser. This powerful tool enables Claude to manage tabs, search history, read web pages, and manipulate browser content based on your requests, making complex browsing and research tasks significantly easier.

Installation

To set up the Browser Control MCP server, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository
2. Install the required dependencies with:

npm install
npm install --prefix mcp-server
npm install --prefix firefox-extension
npm run build

The final build command will automatically generate a shared secret key that secures communication between the MCP server and the Firefox extension.

Setting Up Claude Desktop

To integrate with Claude Desktop:

1. Open Claude Desktop
2. Go to Developer settings and click "Edit Config"
3. Add the following configuration to your claude_desktop_config.json file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "browser-control": {
            "command": "node",
            "args": [
                "/path/to/repo/mcp-server/dist/server.js"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Make sure to replace /path/to/repo with the actual path to your cloned repository.

4. Restart Claude Desktop to apply the changes

Installing the Firefox Extension

The MCP server requires a companion Firefox extension to function properly:

1. Type about:debugging in the Firefox URL bar
2. Click on "This Firefox"
3. Click on "Load Temporary Add-on..."
4. Navigate to the firefox-extension folder in your cloned repository
5. Select the manifest.json file

Alternative Firefox Installation

If you prefer not to install the extension in your primary Firefox instance, you can:

1. Download Firefox Developer Edition from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/
2. Install the extension in this separate browser instance
3. Use this dedicated instance for your Claude browser control tasks

Using Browser Control

Once installed, you can ask Claude to perform various browser-related tasks:

Tab Management

Ask Claude to:

• Close non-work related tabs
• Reorder tabs logically
• Close tabs that haven't been accessed recently

Example prompts:

• "Close all tabs in my browser related to social media."
• "Rearrange my browser tabs in alphabetical order."

History Search

Ask Claude to:

• Find articles in your browsing history
• Open relevant historical pages

Example prompts:

• "Find that article about quantum computing I read last week."
• "Open all the recipe websites I visited in the past month."

Web Research

Ask Claude to:

• Search the web and analyze results
• Read and summarize articles
• Extract specific information from multiple pages

Example prompts:

• "Search for recent studies on climate change, open the top 3 results, and summarize them."
• "Find reviews for the best wireless headphones, compare features and prices from different sources."

Claude will be able to access the contents of your browser tabs as MCP resources, allowing for deeper integration and more complex browsing tasks.

How to add this MCP server to Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > MCP and click "Add new global MCP server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "cursor-rules-mcp": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "cursor-rules-mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explictly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.