Kimi WebBridge Gives AI Agents Full Local Control of Your Browser

Beijing-based Moonshot AI has released Kimi WebBridge, a browser extension that lets AI agents interact with websites the way a person would — searching, clicking, typing, scrolling, and extracting data — all while running locally on your device. That last part is the one that actually matters.

Most browser automation tools for AI agents push your session data through cloud servers. That means your authenticated pages, form entries, and sensitive account content leave your machine. Moonshot AI released Kimi WebBridge as a Chrome extension and local background service that lets AI agents operate inside Chrome and Edge through the Chrome DevTools Protocol, and the company says browsing activity, form entries, and screenshots remain on the user's device and do not pass through Moonshot servers.

It's available now on the Chrome Web Store and the official Kimi website.

How Kimi WebBridge Works

The architecture here is worth understanding before you dismiss this as just another browser plugin. Kimi WebBridge pairs a local service with a browser extension. The agent sends commands to the local service, which uses Chrome DevTools Protocol to navigate, click, screenshot, and read pages in your existing Chrome or Edge browser, then sends the results back. Everything runs locally, so your login sessions and page content never leave your device.

Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) is the same low-level interface developers use for browser debugging and testing. Repurposing it for agent control is technically sound, and it means the agent operates inside your existing browser session with all your cookies and logins already present, not inside an isolated sandbox.

The agent can open pages, click buttons, fill out forms, take screenshots to understand what it's looking at, read text from pages, and pass results back to whatever AI tool you're using. It's not a separate browser — it works in the Chrome or Edge window you already have open, with all your cookies and logins intact.

Key Technical Highlights

WebBridge supports multiple AI ecosystems including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Hermes, and Kimi Code CLI, positioning the platform as an agent-agnostic browser automation layer rather than a closed ecosystem.

A few things stand out technically:

• Local-first by design. The platform uses a local-first architecture built on Chrome DevTools Protocol, allowing browser sessions, authenticated pages, and sensitive enterprise data to remain on the user's machine instead of being routed through cloud infrastructure.
• Multi-agent scale. Moonshot says K2.6 supports up to 300 parallel sub-agents executing across 4,000 coordinated steps simultaneously — the architecture WebBridge taps into when handling complex, multi-step browser tasks.
• Agent-agnostic connections. For third-party agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and Hermes, the setup page provides a connection command that links the agent to the local WebBridge service.
• Cross-browser support. WebBridge works inside Chrome and Edge, using whichever session the user already has open.

The Model Behind It

WebBridge is powered by Moonshot AI's Kimi model family, and the underlying AI is more formidable than most Western users realize. Kimi K2 launched in July 2025 as a 1-trillion-parameter, open-source mixture-of-experts model ranking first among open-source models and fifth overall on the LMSYS Arena leaderboard.

The latest version raises that bar further. Moonshot's latest model, K2.6, released in April 2026, scored 58.6% on SWE-Bench Pro, a benchmark that measures software engineering tasks on real GitHub issues. The company's data places that score ahead of GPT-5.4 at 57.7% and Claude Opus 4.6 at 53.4%.

That benchmark matters here because browser agents doing real work — filling forms, extracting structured data, navigating multi-step workflows — require strong instruction-following and reasoning, not just raw language generation.

Installation and Setup

Installation requires the Kimi Desktop App and the browser extension. Mac users can download the app from the setup page; Windows users can install via a PowerShell command provided by Moonshot. After launching the desktop app and starting Kimi Claw, users add a new Claw and select "On my computer" to deploy a local agent.

Kimi Claw Desktop is a Kimi Claw that runs locally on your computer. Open the Kimi Desktop App, find Kimi Claw in the left sidebar, add a new Claw, and select "On my computer" to deploy.

For third-party agent setups, the process is simpler: the setup page provides a connection command you paste into your agent, which connects it to the WebBridge service automatically. Moonshot notes a common support issue is the extension attempting to connect before the local service is running; restarting the app or resending the connection command normally resolves the problem.

Practical Use Cases

You could ask your agent to browse Amazon for mechanical keyboards under $150 with at least 4.5 stars and return a ranked comparison, or scan LinkedIn job listings across multiple searches and compile them into a spreadsheet, or check prices for the same product across 10 retailers and report back the best deal. Any task that involves clicking through a website repeatedly becomes a one-sentence prompt.

Moonshot states that running the agent locally reduces exposure of sensitive data such as bank or work account information. That's the real unlock for enterprise users who have been sitting out browser automation tools specifically because of data exposure concerns.

Where It Sits in the Competitive Field

Anthropic's own computer use feature lets Claude interact with desktops. OpenAI's Operator and ChatGPT Atlas do similar things through a hosted cloud service. Google has DeepMind-powered agent experiments and Perplexity has its Comet Browser.

The difference with Kimi WebBridge, at least for now, is the local-first architecture. Cloud-based browser agents are convenient but require routing your browsing activity through a third party. For anything involving personal accounts or sensitive data, that's a real consideration.

Final Thoughts

What makes WebBridge technically interesting isn't the browser control itself — that part is solved. What's interesting is the combination: a local CDP bridge, an agent-agnostic connection layer, and a model in K2.6 that currently leads SWE-Bench Pro. Most browser automation tools ship with a captive model or a cloud dependency. This one ships with neither.

The multi-agent scale claim deserves scrutiny in practice. 300 parallel sub-agents across 4,000 steps is a ceiling figure, and real-world browser tasks will hit bottlenecks long before that. I'd want to see how it handles authentication edge cases, dynamic JavaScript-heavy pages, and session state across long task chains before calling it production-ready for enterprise workflows.

Still, the local-first positioning is a concrete differentiator in a space where most competitors default to cloud routing. If you're already running Claude Code or Cursor and want browser control without giving up session privacy, WebBridge is worth testing. Drop your thoughts in the comments — especially if you've already run it against something non-trivial.

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