Agent-Assisted Installation

Audience

This guide is written for LLM coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, etc.) to follow when installing Gasoline for a user. If you’re a human, see the Quick Start instead.

You are installing Gasoline Agentic Browser — an MCP server + Chrome extension that gives you real-time browser telemetry (errors, logs, network, DOM, screenshots, automation).

Prerequisites

• macOS, Linux, or Windows (WSL/Git Bash)
• Chrome or Chromium-based browser
• curl and unzip available in PATH

Step 1: Run the installer

Run the one-liner. This downloads the binary, stages the extension, and configures all detected MCP clients automatically.

macOS / Linux:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brennhill/gasoline-agentic-browser-devtools-mcp/STABLE/scripts/install.sh | bash

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brennhill/gasoline-agentic-browser-devtools-mcp/STABLE/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

What this does (no further action needed):

• Downloads the platform binary to ~/.gasoline/bin/
• Verifies SHA-256 checksum
• Extracts the Chrome extension to ~/GasolineAgenticDevtoolExtension/
• Runs --install which auto-detects and configures: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Antigravity, Zed

If the install script is unavailable, fall back to npm:

npm install -g gasoline-agentic-browser && gasoline-agentic-browser --install

Verify the install succeeded

Check the exit code was 0 and the binary exists:

~/.gasoline/bin/gasoline-agentic-browser --version

Step 2: Ask the user to load the Chrome extension

This is the one step that requires human interaction. Chrome does not allow programmatic installation of unpacked extensions — the user must click through the Chrome UI.

Tell the user:

To finish setup, load the Gasoline browser extension:

1. Open chrome://extensions in Chrome
2. Enable Developer mode (toggle in the top-right corner)
3. Click Load unpacked
4. Select the folder: ~/GasolineAgenticDevtoolExtension

The Gasoline icon should appear in your toolbar. Click it — it should show “Connected”.

Why this can’t be automated: chrome://extensions is a privileged Chrome-internal page. No external process, MCP tool, or browser automation framework can toggle Developer Mode or trigger “Load unpacked.” This is a Chrome security boundary.

Partial automation

If the user is willing to restart Chrome, the extension can be loaded via CLI flag without any UI clicks:

# macOS — launches Chrome with the extension pre-loaded
open -a "Google Chrome" --args --load-extension="$HOME/GasolineAgenticDevtoolExtension"

This only applies to that Chrome session. For persistent installation, the manual Load Unpacked flow is required.

Step 3: Restart the AI tool

The MCP config was written in Step 1, but the AI tool needs to restart to pick it up.

Tell the user:

Restart your AI tool (quit and reopen Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) to activate the Gasoline MCP server.

For Claude Code specifically, no restart is needed if the installer used claude mcp add-json — it takes effect on the next conversation.

Step 4: Verify end-to-end

Once the user confirms the extension is loaded and the AI tool is restarted, run the doctor command:

gasoline-agentic-browser --doctor

Expected output shows:

• Binary: OK with version number
• Port 7890: available (or in use by Gasoline)
• At least one client: status “ok”

Then verify the MCP connection is live by calling a Gasoline tool:

Use the observe tool with what: "page" to check if the extension is connected.

If the extension is connected, you’ll get back page info (URL, title). If not, you’ll get a message indicating no extension is connected — ask the user to check the extension is loaded and they have a tab open.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
--doctor shows “binary not found”	PATH not updated	Run export PATH="$HOME/.gasoline/bin:$PATH" and add to shell profile
Port 7890 in use	Stale daemon	Run gasoline-agentic-browser --kill then retry
Extension shows “Disconnected”	Daemon not running	The MCP client starts the daemon automatically — make sure the AI tool is running
observe returns no data	No tab open	User needs to have at least one Chrome tab open
Extension not visible in toolbar	Not pinned	User should click the puzzle-piece icon in Chrome toolbar and pin Gasoline

Summary

Step	Who	Automatable?
Download binary + verify checksum	Agent	Yes — install.sh handles it
Stage extension files	Agent	Yes — install.sh handles it
Configure MCP clients	Agent	Yes — --install handles it
Deploy agent skills	Agent	Yes — handled by postinstall
Load Chrome extension	User	No — Chrome security boundary
Restart AI tool	User	No — agent can’t restart itself
Verify with --doctor	Agent	Yes