Automate Browser Tasks and Notify People

Beyond Debugging: Gasoline as Your Browser Autopilot

Gasoline isn’t just for debugging. The interact tool gives your AI full browser control — click, type, navigate, read page content. Combine that with your AI’s ability to reason about what it sees, and you get a general-purpose browser automation agent.

The real power? Chain the automation with a notification step. Run a report, extract the results, and send them to someone — all from a single natural language instruction.

Example: Generate a Report and Email It via Gmail

Here’s the scenario: every Monday, you pull a performance report from your analytics dashboard and email the highlights to your team. Let’s automate that.

The instruction you give your AI:

1. Go to https://analytics.example.com/dashboard
2. Click "This Week" in the date range picker
3. Click "Generate Report"
4. Wait for the report to load
5. Read the summary numbers: total users, conversion rate, revenue
6. Open Gmail and compose a new email
7. Send to team@example.com
8. Subject: "Weekly Performance Report"
9. Body: Include the summary numbers you extracted, formatted nicely
10. Send it

What the AI does under the hood:

Phase 1: Extract the data

interact({action: "navigate", url: "https://analytics.example.com/dashboard"})

interact({action: "click", selector: "text=This Week"})

interact({action: "click", selector: "text=Generate Report"})

interact({action: "wait_for", selector: "text=Total Users", timeout_ms: 10000})

interact({action: "get_text", selector: ".report-summary"})
// -> "Total Users: 14,230 | Conversion: 3.2% | Revenue: $48,700"

Phase 2: Compose and send the email

interact({action: "navigate", url: "https://mail.google.com"})

interact({action: "click", selector: "text=Compose"})

interact({action: "type", selector: "aria-label=To recipients",
          text: "team@example.com"})

interact({action: "key_press", selector: "aria-label=To recipients",
          text: "Tab"})

interact({action: "type", selector: "placeholder=Subject",
          text: "Weekly Performance Report"})

interact({action: "click", selector: "aria-label=Message Body"})

interact({action: "type", selector: "aria-label=Message Body",
          text: "Hi team,\n\nHere are this week's numbers:\n\n- Total Users: 14,230\n- Conversion Rate: 3.2%\n- Revenue: $48,700\n\nBest,\nAutomated Report"})

interact({action: "click", selector: "aria-label=Send"})

Done. Your team gets the email. You didn’t open a browser.

Why This Works (and Why It’s Safe)

You’re already logged in. Gasoline uses your real browser with your real sessions. If you’re logged into Gmail, the AI can compose an email. No API keys, no OAuth tokens, no service accounts.

AI Web Pilot is opt-in. The interact tool only works when you’ve explicitly enabled AI Web Pilot in the extension popup. It’s off by default.

Everything is visible. The AI drives your actual browser — you can watch every action happen in real time. Nothing runs headlessly or behind the scenes. If the AI clicks something wrong, you see it and can intervene.

Use subtitles to narrate. Add subtitle to each action so you can follow along:

interact({action: "click", selector: "text=Compose",
          subtitle: "Opening Gmail compose window"})

More Automation Ideas

The same pattern — navigate, interact, extract, notify — works for dozens of workflows:

Fill out timesheets:

"Go to our timesheet app, fill in 8 hours for each weekday this week
under project 'Gasoline', and submit."

Monitor a competitor’s pricing page:

"Navigate to competitor.com/pricing, read the pricing tiers,
compare them to our pricing page, and email me a summary
of any changes."

Submit a form across multiple systems:

"Take the data from the spreadsheet at drive.google.com/xyz,
and for each row, go to our internal tool and create a new
support ticket with the customer name and issue description."

Check deployment status and notify Slack:

"Go to our Vercel dashboard, check if the latest deployment
succeeded, get the deployment URL, then open Slack and post
the status in #engineering."

Tips for Reliable Automation

Use wait_for before interacting. Pages load asynchronously. Don’t assume elements exist immediately:

interact({action: "wait_for", selector: "text=Compose", timeout_ms: 5000})
interact({action: "click", selector: "text=Compose"})

Use list_interactive when you’re unsure. If you’re automating a new app for the first time, let the AI discover the elements:

interact({action: "list_interactive"})

Check for errors after critical steps. Verify nothing broke:

observe({what: "errors"})

Save checkpoints before risky actions. Before clicking “Send” or “Submit,” save state so you can review:

interact({action: "save_state", snapshot_name: "before-send"})

Handle Gmail’s quirks. Gmail uses augmented aria-label values that include keyboard shortcuts (e.g., "Send ‪(⌘Enter)‬"). Gasoline’s aria-label= selector handles this automatically with starts-with matching — aria-label=Send matches the full label.

The Pattern

Every browser automation task follows the same structure:

1. Navigate to the starting page
2. Interact with the UI (click, type, select)
3. Observe to extract data or verify state
4. Navigate to the notification channel (email, Slack, etc.)
5. Interact to compose and send the notification

No new tools. No new APIs. No new credentials. Just your browser, your AI, and Gasoline connecting them.