Develop Chrome Extensions with DevTools for agents

This episode from I/O Connect Bengaluru explains how to let coding agents install Chrome extensions using Chrome DevTools for agents. This is useful for testing extensions built manually or by an agent. While agents often have limited browser access, Chrome DevTools for agents provides additional tools for extension control. To enable this, after installation, users must add the "category extensions" flag to their MCP config, as extension-specific tools are not enabled by default to conserve tokens. The process involves an agent using the install extension tool to load an extension from disk, the trigger extension action tool to open its pop-up, and the take snapshot tool to access contents, allowing interaction like checking a task. Chrome DevTools for agents is built on the Chrome DevTools protocol, which also powers Puppeteer. New extension capabilities exposed in the protocol benefit both Puppeteer and Chrome DevTools for agents, ensuring consistent development across tools. This also aids W3C efforts to improve cross-browser extension compatibility through web platform tests for extension APIs.