OpenTabs is an open-source TypeScript tool that lets an AI agent call real web APIs through your authenticated browser session instead of driving a headless browser, for developers using MCP-capable AI clients such as Claude Code or OpenCode.

What it is

OpenTabs consists of a CLI (@opentabs-dev/cli), a Chrome extension, and a local server. The extension bridges your browser to that local server, and your AI then calls web APIs through the session you are already logged into — no API keys, no OAuth setup, no screenshots, and no DOM scraping. It works with any MCP client, and it also offers a CLI mode for people who would rather not use MCP.

The specific problem it addresses is that browser automation is a fragile way to make an AI do routine web work: it clicks buttons and reads pixels where the site already exposes a clean API. Because OpenTabs runs the call through your existing login, it removes the credential-plumbing step that normally blocks an agent from acting on services like Slack, Discord, GitHub, Jira, Notion, Figma, AWS, or Stripe. In the README's own example, an AI sends a Discord message and adds reactions as genuine API calls rather than simulated clicks.

Key capabilities

• Ships 100+ plugins covering roughly 2,000 tools across services including Slack, Discord, GitHub, Jira, Notion, Figma, AWS, and Stripe, installed with the single command opentabs plugin install and usable immediately without a restart.
• Includes built-in browser tools — screenshots, clicking, typing, and network capture — that work on any open tab without needing a plugin.
• Scaffolds a new plugin in one command, lets you publish it to npm for anyone to install, and can point your AI at an arbitrary website so it discovers the APIs and builds the plugin for you.
• Applies an off-by-default security model: no tool executes until you explicitly enable it, your AI reviews the plugin source before you enable it, and permissions reset whenever a plugin updates.
• Provides three permission levels — Off, Ask (a confirmation dialog), and Auto — settable per-plugin or per-tool.
• Runs entirely locally with no cloud component, keeps a full audit log, and sends only anonymous telemetry that you can opt out of.
• Requires no API keys or OAuth configuration; if you are logged in, your AI can use the service.

Who uses it and how

• Developers running an MCP client such as Claude Code or OpenCode who want their agent to act on authenticated web services without provisioning credentials for each one.
• Solo and team setups that want the tooling on their own machine, since everything runs locally with an audit log rather than through a hosted service.
• Plugin authors who scaffold, review, and publish plugins to npm so that other users can install them with one command.
• Teams that want a staged rollout of agent permissions, enabling tools one at a time through the Ask confirmation level before granting Auto.
• Contributors working in TypeScript who build with npm run build and validate with npm run check, which runs the build plus type-check, lint, knip, and tests.

Getting started

Requires Node.js 22+ and Chrome: install with npm install -g @opentabs-dev/cli, run opentabs start, then load the extension from ~/.opentabs/extension via Developer mode → Load unpacked in chrome://extensions/ and run opentabs plugin install.

How it compares

No paid products this project replaces are named in the available facts, and no comparable open-source tools are listed either, so it stands alone in this registry.

When to use it — and when not to

You must be willing to operate a local stack: a Node.js 22+ runtime, a Chrome instance with an unpacked extension loaded, and the local server that the extension bridges to, plus the judgment to review each plugin's source before enabling it. It is a poor fit if you need headless, server-side scraping without a signed-in browser, if you cannot expose a Chrome extension to your environment, or if your agent must work without any interactive session — and note that the project carries an MIT licence with a disclaimer that it is not affiliated with or endorsed by any third-party service.

npm install -g @opentabs-dev/cli
opentabs start

opentabs plugin install <plugin-name>

git clone https://github.com/opentabs-dev/opentabs.git
cd opentabs && npm install && npm run build
npm run dev       # tsc watch + MCP server + extension
npm run check     # build + type-check + lint + knip + test