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Add comprehensive table of contents, convert benchmark data to table format, expand use cases section with AI agents/scraping/testing examples, add architecture diagram reference, reorganize build/test sections with collapsible details, and include FAQ section. Improve formatting throughout with horizontal rules and better section hierarchy.
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Lightpanda Browser: Document Summary
What it is: A headless browser built in Zig from scratch. Not a Chromium fork. Targets AI agents, scraping, and automated testing.
Performance: 9x less memory (24 MB vs 207 MB) and 11x faster (2.3s vs 25.2s) than headless Chrome, measured over 100 pages via Puppeteer.
Section Summaries
Quick Start: Install via nightly binary (Linux/macOS/Windows WSL2) or Docker. Run fetch to dump a URL or serve to start a CDP server. Connect Puppeteer/Playwright via ws://127.0.0.1:9222.
Lightpanda vs Headless Chrome: Choose Lightpanda for low-memory scraping, AI agent browsing, CI testing, and markdown extraction. Use Chrome for screenshots, PDFs, WebGL, or full Web API coverage. Supported: HTTP, HTML5, DOM, JS (V8), Ajax, CDP, cookies, proxy, network interception, robots.txt.
Use Cases: AI agents via MCP or CDP, web scraping at scale, headless Chrome replacement in CI, LLM training data extraction with --dump markdown.
Architecture: CDP/WebSocket client → HTML parsed to DOM → CSS applied → JS via V8 → response as HTML, markdown, or structured data.
Why Lightpanda?: Modern web requires JS execution; Chrome is too heavy to run at scale; Lightpanda is built in Zig with no graphical renderer for minimal footprint.
Build from Source: Requires Zig 0.15.2, v8, Libcurl, html5ever, and Rust. make build or zig build run. Optional v8 snapshot for faster startup.
Test: make test for unit tests; make end2end for end-to-end; WPT suite runs via a Go runner in the demo repo.
Contributing: PRs via GitHub; CLA required. Good first issues labeled.
Compatibility Note: Playwright scripts may break after Lightpanda updates when new Web APIs shift Playwright's execution path. File an issue with the last working version.
FAQ: What Lightpanda is, Chrome comparison, Chromium fork question, Playwright/cloud usage, Zig rationale, OS support, robots.txt.