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Agent cannot find browser — Chrome/Chromium not installed

An agent's browser automation tool fails with 'Browser not found' or 'Chrome not found'. The browser binary is either not installed or not on the expected path. ## Agent Decision Tree 1. Is Playwright installed? → check Playwright-specific entry for chromium_headless_shell 2. Using Puppeteer or direct Chrome? → go to Solution A 3. Know the browser is installed but path is wrong? → go to Solution B

Symptoms

  • Agent tool call for browser returns an error about missing browser
  • Chrome, Chromium, or Firefox executable not found
  • Browser-based tasks fail silently with no output

Error signatures

Browser not found
Chrome not found
Chromium not found
Cannot find Chrome
Failed to launch browser
Executable doesn't exist
No browser executable found

Possible causes

  • Chrome/Chromium is not installed on the system
  • Browser is installed but at a non-standard path the agent doesn't check
  • Playwright's browser cache was cleared or corrupted
  • Running in a minimal container without a browser installed

Solutions

Solution A: Install Chromium and set the executable path

risk: lowagentpending_review

Install Chromium via apt (Ubuntu/Debian) or download it, then configure the agent to use the correct path.

  1. Install Chromium: apt-get install -y chromium-browser (Ubuntu) or the equivalent for your OS.
  2. Verify the installation: which chromium-browser or which chromium.
  3. Configure the agent's browser tool to use the installed path.
  4. If using Playwright, run npx playwright install chromium to use Playwright's managed browser.

Commands

apt-get update && apt-get install -y chromium-browser
which chromium-browser || which chromium || which google-chrome
chromium-browser --version
npx playwright install chromium
export PLAYWRIGHT_CHROMIUM_EXECUTABLE_PATH=$(which chromium-browser)

Risks

  • Installing a full browser adds ~300MB+ to the system
  • Browser may require additional system libraries (see Playwright entry for deps)

Verification

  • Run: which chromium-browser → expect: /usr/bin/chromium-browser
  • Run: chromium-browser --version → expect: version string
  • Launch browser via agent tool → expect: browser opens successfully
✓ 0 verified✕ 0 failed

Agent JSON

Canonical machine-readable representation of this issue:

{
  "issue_id": "209b0d9e-8ac5-49ca-be9e-369b0c9a6593",
  "slug": "browser-not-found-agent-error",
  "verification_status": "unverified",
  "canonical_json": "https://codekb.dev/v1/issues/browser-not-found-agent-error"
}
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Agent cannot find browser — Chrome/Chromium not installed · CodeKB