The Safari MCP server for web developers

https://webkit.org/blog/18136/introducing-the-safari-mcp-server-for-web-developers/

by coloneltcb • 20 days ago

272 76 20 days ago

croisillon• 20 days ago

so it's a crossover of dev tools and LLM? sounds sane enough i'd say

Onavo• 20 days ago

I wonder if it supports Private Relay. Private Relay is great for getting around scraping blocks because they explicitly whitelist apple private Relay ips.

reader9274• 20 days ago

Which sites explicitly whitelist Private Relay IPs?

hnav• 20 days ago

https://developer.apple.com/icloud/prepare-your-network-for-... has a guide for web server operators, including a GeoIP CSV which could conceivably be used for whitelisting. More concerning is that they're plugging private access tokens there, which allows Apple to vouch that you're a human running their hardware.

greggsy2• 20 days ago

Should do. Private relay really would be a sweet alternative to residential scraping proxies, but I’d expect sites to put in additionally checks and captchas before too long.

keepamovin4• 20 days ago

Building something similar for Chrome and Firefox browsers: https://github.com/DO-SAY-GO/WebCLI - a CLI not MCP. Tho am considering MCP for distribution, even tho agents love the CLI and the proof demos speak for themselves.

The reason I did not include Safari was there wasn't enough parity between its Safaridriver surface and what Bidi/CDP give now. Safari is doing Bidi tho, iirc. So ...soon perhaps. ;) ;p xx ;p

greggsy2• 20 days ago

Not really sure why your project needs to be so… edgy?

keepamovin4• 20 days ago

Marketing iterations. Plus dang downweighted my posts after I got the biggest Show HN of last year, so I'm trying harder to get attn. HN maybe isn't the big launch - but it's kinda a legacy thing for me. Can't blame a guy for tryin

The actual site is: https://duetbrowser.com/

olmo23• 20 days ago

Not sure you want to hear this but there is 0% chance I will ever bring up a product with a vulgar name at work.

keepamovin4• 19 days ago

I understand that. Hence the name ‘correction’

lynndotpy• 19 days ago

Introducing a new Linux distribution which comes with the yiff sound server, the GIMP image editor, and provides for web browsing entirely using FuckUI.

AIorNot• 20 days ago

Does this support mobile simulator safari too

bel82• 20 days ago

I have been using Chrome's official MCP devtools server since Nov 2025.

https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp

Before that I used Chrome web drivers but MCP is faster and more capable.

I also instruct LLMs to test my pages on Firefox using its official MCP to make sure they work in Firefox too:

https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-devtools-mcp

Now I will add Safari to the compatibility tests. cool

Raed667• 20 days ago

Is there a difference between using these and using the playwright mcp with Chrome/Firefox config?

bel82• 19 days ago

I can speak for Chrome's MCP which I have more experience.

devtools MCP will have access to more deep level fetures such as performance profiling, lighthouse and network requests in details (headers, auth, cookies...).

For example, I had success using chrome devtools mcp to debug frontend performance issues. The LLM captured and analyzed some nice traces and was able to isolate bottlenecks and unnecessary repaints and reflows.

Syntaf• 19 days ago

I used the chrome MCP to profile a slow react page at my company, set a /goal and had it iterate until it achieved under 100ms responsiveness to actions.

Claude was able to identify the slowness and use various react tricks to fix the specific issues, all without my input.

I don’t think the playwright MCP can do this, unless I’m mistaken

a_c• 19 days ago

Sometimes I find myself wanting the other way round, instead of letting LLM tell browser what to do, I want what I did manually in the browser be visible to LLM. I made a MCP to cover that use case

demetris6• 20 days ago

But does Apple really care about web developers?

How do you test on Safari if you don’t have Apple devices?

How difficult can it be for Apple to make barebones virtual machines with just Safaris?

Terretta• 20 days ago

Even in the Chrome hegemony you don't want to be missing Edge and many others, so you test chromium.

Similarly, while not perfect you can test WebKit, and if you like, on Linux or Windows, for example:

https://orionbrowser.com/platforms/linux

Apple wouldn't be in the business of VMs with Safari, but if you're looking for MacOS VMs, turn to a CSP: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/

Many have software testing orchestration pre-wired.

demetris6• 20 days ago

I know of the solutions. I use a few of them.

I have multiple Playwright webkits on both Windows and Linux. I have Epiphany on Linux (not 100% same webkit). I have subscriptions for testing on real hardware.

This is why it seems to me that Apple does not really care about web developers.

Alifatisk2• 19 days ago

No way, is Orion Browser available on other platforms as well now? Does it mean I can finally do tests for Safari (webkit) without owning an Apple product or paying for a vm? Incredible.

pjmlp5• 20 days ago

Just like you would test IE on Linux or OS X.

demetris6• 20 days ago

  ### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ### 
  # Changes to this file will not be preserved.
  # This file will not be recreated if removed.
  X-Repolib-Name: Microsoft Edge
  Types: deb
  URIs: https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/edge-stable
  Suites: stable
  Components: main
  Architectures: amd64
  Architectures: amd64
  Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/microsoft-edge.gpg

Come on! The year is not 2001.

embedding-shape2• 20 days ago

How do you test on Safari if you don’t have Apple devices?

How do you test a Playstation game without a Playstation (dev kit)? How do you test some hardware firmware without having the hardware? How can you run a program without the hardware required to run the program, if no emulator/simulator is available?

I'm almost lost at words how these are questions, unless they're theoretical and some diatribe comes afterwards that has the actual point trying to be made, but it never came.

Yes, some things run only on specific hardware and without virtualization/emulation, you're not supposed to test those things outside of the hardware. Been a thing for decades, probably since the beginning of computing.

How difficult can it be for Apple to make barebones virtual machines with just Safaris?

Almost nothing Apple does is seemingly decided by how difficult it is, for better or worse, but are strategic decisions. If you haven't caught up with that they're building a walled garden for themselves, I'm not sure what could convince that they are. I think this is extremely clear for most people. If you don't like it, don't play there, like the rest of us.

shubb• 19 days ago

A lot of folks want to run tests off a GitHub action I.e. on a server somewhere. Ideally you want your test stack to fit in a docker image. So this does suck for developers in the respect and you could imagine apple releasing a special docker image that just ran safari if they wanted to really make it easy to develop for thier platform.

However, I imagine someone will fill a server rack with cheap old macs and offer and safari mcp as a service…

hbn2• 19 days ago

I don't think it's fair to compare development for web, which is supposed to be an open standard, with developing for a proprietary piece of hardware like the Playstation.

If you want to develop a game for the Switch and ignore the Playstation entirely, you can, and then you don't need a Playstation (dev kit).

When you're developing for the web, you're ideally making something that runs regardless of the user's browser. When you start getting bug reports in from Safari users, how else are you supposed to fix them? Cheapest option is detect if they're a Safari user and tell them to use another browser, but that's not really ideal for anyone except Google.

andrethegiant• 19 days ago

But does Apple really care about web developers?

They just released this new tool, so yes.

egeozcan• 20 days ago

I'd personally suggest Playwright-CLI: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-cli

It works much faster for me than the MCP servers I tried.

jwr• 20 days ago

Also, spel (https://github.com/Blockether/spel) for persistent browser sessions (through a daemon) and Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit engines.

frb2• 19 days ago

All this felt heavy to me. Full browser, debug protocol, DOM dump on every read. MCP vs CLI is the smaller question, what sits underneath matters more. So I built a small Rust binary that drives the system webview directly and returns state tokens and deltas instead of the DOM. Loading the HN front page costs the agent about 50 tokens. It speaks both MCP and CLI, pick whichever your agent prefers.

https://github.com/frane/vibesurfer

jeffyaw2• 19 days ago

playwright is AWESOME for e2e testing (works great with electron!).

although, i use the playwright mcp. :)

robbs• 19 days ago

The CLI is, IME, faster and less buggy than the MCP.

quantumHazer• 20 days ago

There are many ways to build for the web, both with and without AI. If AI is a part of your workflow, we think this tool will help make it even more productive. And if it isn’t, that’s OK too.

Crazy thing to say in 2026 where if you write code and not delegate every bit to an agent you're considered a noob by some people.

siva7• 20 days ago

The opposite was considered two years ago a crazy thing to say. I'm glad this changed and people using ai don't have to hide in the closet anymore for doing so.

dofm• 20 days ago

When have people using AI to develop ever had to hide in any closet? It's the most public "new hotness" ever.

hbn2• 19 days ago

It wasn't nearly as good 2 years ago.

llm_nerd• 19 days ago

Which part makes it crazy? The fact that they felt the need to add this disclaimer to try to assuage the fanatical anti-AI contingent?

Like this is specifically a tool for AI-augmented development, and they had to add this "but also, thoughts and prayers for you non-AI people" is incredibly weird, but not in the way you seem to think it is.

adam12345• 19 days ago

should say "see how my website performs on safari"

jickmao• 19 days ago

MCP for browser automation is interesting because Safari's WebKit engine is the one most AI agents can't easily drive (Playwright and Puppeteer are Chromium-first). Having an MCP server for it could fill a real gap in cross-browser testing for agent workflows.

defied• 19 days ago

There has been the (Apple provided) safaridriver for a couple of years. It speaks WebDriver W3C and can be used to interact with a Safari instance.

simonw2• 19 days ago

I've been telling agents to run Chrome and talk to it directly via the CDP recently and finding that to work very well.

michelb• 19 days ago

Indeed. This works much better and faster than the mcp route.

motoroco• 19 days ago

I'll have to try that. how does it compare to using playwright? it seems like one advantage of playwright is being able to use it with multiple browsers, at least as far as web development goes. if these browser-specific tools end up being faster or more token efficient then it's probably the better pick for task automation and claws

simonw2• 19 days ago

Yeah, the big advantage of playwright is that it's cross-browser. It's still my go-to tool for automated testing - I use the CDP trick for one-off automation tasks.

mrtksn• 19 days ago

Does the websites get some flag or clue that this is an AI bot interacting?

atonse• 19 days ago

I am especially hopeful for this for my daily stuff, not just testing.

Meaning, having a hopefully seamless way to perform some automations in the browser on my behalf but since it’s the browser I’m logged in to, it just makes the handoff between myself and the agent feel more seamless.

And that’s because I’ve used safari as my main browser, not chrome, because it isn’t as much of a battery hog.

kordlessagain• 19 days ago

I'm working on Hyperia and it has full agentic control of a webpane (Electron based) for doing crazy things with it: https://github.com/deepbluedynamics/hyperia.

Uses an agent container orchestrator as well, which has MCP tools to expose ports in the container (and thus can display the work in the webpane): https://github.com/DeepBlueDynamics/nemesis8

I'll add the Safari MCP wiring to n8 today...

New releases landing tonight with more features.

ccouzens• 19 days ago

It also does not have access to your personal information in Safari (e.g. AutoFill or other browser activity).

I read this as meaning you won't be logged into the instance the agent interacts with

mooreds• 19 days ago

it just makes the handoff between myself and the agent feel more seamless.

This terrifies me because there's no way for the services on the other side of the browser to know who is doing what.

How do you constrain the agent?

How do you keep track of what you have done vs the agent?

What am I missing? Am I just behind the times?

Edit, added reference to what terrifies me.

runjake• 19 days ago

Federico Viticci went into a little more detail about what this means on MacStories, Mastodon, and the latest episode of the Connected podcast. It is also more approachable for laypeople.

Be sure to visit the links from the story, as well.

https://www.macstories.net/linked/safaris-new-mcp-server-is-...

https://mastodon.macstories.net/@viticci/116847167023618099

https://relay.fm/connected/610

efitz2• 19 days ago

How are the MCP servers compared to Playwright?

noiv2• 19 days ago

PLayWright is not built into browsers...?

efitz2• 19 days ago

What is the difference in functionality?

cadamsdotcom• 18 days ago

Why waste tokens letting your agent use an MCP?

Have it write playwright code to debug. (for those who don’t know, Playwright is a system and API that lets you write code to drive a headless (invisible) browser - “click the button with this DOM id, scroll to here, choose this dropdown option, click Submit, etc.)

Once it tracks down the bugs - boom! You have an end to end test to add to your suite.

The Safari MCP server for web developers

Related Stories