# Lightpanda

> The first headless browser built from scratch for machines, not humans. Zig-native, 10× faster, 10× less memory than Chrome headless.

## What is Lightpanda?

Lightpanda is a headless browser engine written in Zig, purpose-built for web automation, web scraping, and AI agents. It is not a fork or patch of an existing browser — it was created from the ground up for headless operation without rendering overhead.

## Key Capabilities

- **10× faster** than Chrome headless for browser automation tasks
- **10× less memory** than Chrome via zigdom (custom Zig DOM implementation)
- **Instant startup** — sub-100ms cold start, fully embeddable
- **CDP compatible** — native Chrome DevTools Protocol support
- **Playwright & Puppeteer interop** — connect via `chromium.connectOverCDP()` or `puppeteer.connect()`
- **JavaScript execution** — V8 engine with full Web API support
- **Request interception** — pause, modify, mock, or block HTTP requests via CDP
- **Multi-client** — handle multiple concurrent CDP connections in a single process
- **robots.txt support** — opt-in compliance for responsible crawling
- **Cloud offering** — managed service at `cloud.lightpanda.io` with both Lightpanda and Chrome backends

## Quick Start

```javascript
// Connect Playwright to Lightpanda
const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP('ws://localhost:9222');
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
```

```javascript
// Connect Puppeteer to Lightpanda Cloud
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({
  browserWSEndpoint: 'wss://cloud.lightpanda.io/ws?token=YOUR_TOKEN',
});
```

## Architecture

- **Language:** Zig (systems programming) + V8 (JavaScript)
- **DOM:** Custom Zig-based DOM implementation (zigdom), replacing LibDOM
- **Networking:** libcurl for HTTP/TLS
- **Protocol:** Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) over WebSocket
- **Deployment:** Single binary, single process, multi-threaded

## Blog Posts (15 articles)

- [Native Markdown Output in Lightpanda](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/native-markdown-output) — 2026-03-05
- [How We Built MultiClient into Lightpanda](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/how-we-built-multiclient) — 2026-02-27
- [Lightpanda Now Supports robots.txt](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/robotstxt-support) — 2026-02-20
- [Why Request Interception Matters](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/why-request-interception-matters) — 2026-02-10
- [From Local to Real World Benchmarks](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/from-local-to-real-world-benchmarks) — 2026-01-27
- [Migrating our DOM to Zig](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/migrating-our-dom-to-zig) — 2026-01-08
- [Why We Built Lightpanda in Zig](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/why-we-built-lightpanda-in-zig) — 2025-12-05
- [CDP Under the Hood: A Deep Dive](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/cdp-under-the-hood) — 2025-11-28
- [The Real Cost of JavaScript: Why Web Automation Isn't What It Used to Be](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/the-real-cost-of-javascript) — 2025-11-24
- [What Is a True Headless Browser?](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/what-is-a-true-headless-browser) — 2025-11-14
- [CDP vs Playwright vs Puppeteer: Is This the Wrong Question?](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/cdp-vs-playwright-vs-puppeteer-is-this-the-wrong-question) — 2025-11-07
- [Browser security in the age of AI agents](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/browser-security-in-the-age-of-ai-agents) — 2025-08-29
- [Lightpanda browser now uses libcurl](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/lightpanda-browser-now-uses-libcurl) — 2025-07-16
- [Lightpanda raises pre-seed  to develop the first browser built for machines and AI](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/lightpanda-raises-preseed) — 2025-06-10
- [Why build a new browser?  From intuition to reality](https://lightpanda.io/blog/posts/why-build-a-new-browser) — 2025-05-28

> Full blog content available at [https://lightpanda.io/blog/llms-full.txt](https://lightpanda.io/blog/llms-full.txt)

## Documentation (14 pages)

- [index](https://lightpanda.io/docs/)
- [Getting started](https://lightpanda.io/docs/cloud-offer/getting-started)
- [CDP](https://lightpanda.io/docs/cloud-offer/tools/cdp)
- [MCP](https://lightpanda.io/docs/cloud-offer/tools/mcp)
- [Build from sources](https://lightpanda.io/docs/open-source/guides/build-from-sources)
- [Configure a proxy](https://lightpanda.io/docs/open-source/guides/configure-a-proxy)
- [Use Stagehand](https://lightpanda.io/docs/open-source/guides/use-stagehand)
- [Installation](https://lightpanda.io/docs/open-source/installation)
- [Systems requirements](https://lightpanda.io/docs/open-source/systems-requirements)
- [Usage](https://lightpanda.io/docs/open-source/usage)
- [Build your first data extraction script](https://lightpanda.io/docs/quickstart/build-your-first-extraction-script)
- [Go to production with Lightpanda cloud](https://lightpanda.io/docs/quickstart/go-to-production-with-lightpanda-cloud)
- [Installation and setup](https://lightpanda.io/docs/quickstart/installation-and-setup)
- [Your first test](https://lightpanda.io/docs/quickstart/your-first-test)

> Full docs content available at [https://lightpanda.io/docs/llms-full.txt](https://lightpanda.io/docs/llms-full.txt)

## Links

- [Website](https://lightpanda.io)
- [Documentation](https://lightpanda.io/docs)
- [Blog](https://lightpanda.io/blog)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser)
- [npm package](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@lightpanda/browser)
- [Discord](https://discord.gg/K63XeymfB5)
- [Cloud Console](https://console.lightpanda.io)

## Team

Founded by Francis Bouvier (CEO) and Pierre Tachoire (CTO). Pre-seed funded, backed by ISAI with angel investors from Mistral, Hugging Face, and Dust.