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QuickstartsMCP

MCP

Lightpanda’s MCP  server exposes browser tools, like navigate, read, click, fill, and extract, to any AI application that speaks the Model Context Protocol. Connect it once, then prompt your agent in plain language.

Prerequisites

  • An MCP host: Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, or a custom client.

Steps

Install Lightpanda

curl -fsSL https://pkg.lightpanda.io/install.sh | bash
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Other options: WSL2 on Windows, Docker, package managers.

Connect your AI agent

Your MCP host starts lightpanda mcp itself and talks to it over stdin and stdout, so it needs the full path to the binary. Print it with:

command -v lightpanda

A bare lightpanda may not work here: your MCP host starts it outside your terminal, so it doesn’t see the PATH you set during install.

Open your host’s MCP configuration:

  • Claude Desktop: Settings > Developer > Edit Config (opens claude_desktop_config.json)
  • Cursor: .cursor/mcp.json in your project, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for all projects
  • Windsurf: ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json

Add Lightpanda, replacing /path/to/lightpanda with the path you printed:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lightpanda": {
      "command": "/path/to/lightpanda",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}
ℹ️

Respect robots.txt and avoid high-frequency requests against small sites. Add --obey-robots to args to have Lightpanda follow robots.txt for you.

Try it

quotes.toscrape.com  is a public scraping-practice site built by Zyte: a fictional quotes catalog whose search page filters by author and tag through an AJAX form.

Prompt your agent:

Go to quotes.toscrape.com/search.aspx and find which tags Albert Einstein's quotes are filed under, then give me his inspirational one.

The agent chains tool calls to answer it: goto the search page, detectForms to find the author and tag dropdowns, selectOption the author (which reloads the tag list for that author), selectOption the tag, click search, waitForState for the results to load, then extract the quote.

Go to production

Lightpanda Cloud exposes the same MCP server over Streamable HTTP , so there’s no process to install or keep alive. Point your host at the endpoint nearest you through mcp-remote , the bridge MCP hosts that only support stdio need to reach a remote server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lightpanda-cloud": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://euwest.cloud.lightpanda.io/mcp?token=TOKEN"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Find more MCP options and every tool in the MCP tools reference.

AgentOne-liner