Intent to Prototype: Script Tools API

[David Bokan]

Contact emails

bo...@chromium.org, hvano...@chromium.org, khusha...@chromium.org

Explainer

None - We're working to publish an explainer ASAP and will link it on this thread when it's available.

Specification

None

Summary

Script Tools enable authors to expose JavaScript APIs on their site for automated use by the user agent. They allow an author to annotate these APIs with descriptions and provide input schema, allowing automation frameworks a more specific method to access the site's functionality.

Blink component

Blink

Motivation

Automation over web pages is an increasingly active area. Currently, web APIs provide no direct way to interact with automation frameworks so these frameworks rely on simulating user input on pages. Script Tools aims to provide a way for participating web sites to provide automation-specific paths in their UI. Automation can then proceed more quickly and enables the web site's UI to react.

Initial public proposal

None

TAG review

None

TAG review status

Pending

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

None

Gecko: No signal

WebKit: No signal

Web developers: No signals

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

None

Debuggability

None

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

No

Flag name on about://flags

None

Finch feature name

None

Non-finch justification

None

Requires code in //chrome?

True

Estimated milestones

No milestones specified

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5117755740913664?gate=5183588999626752

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[Reilly Grant]

On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 9:36 AM David Bokan <bo...@chromium.org> wrote:

Contact emails

bo...@chromium.org, hvano...@chromium.org, khusha...@chromium.org

Explainer

None - We're working to publish an explainer ASAP and will link it on this thread when it's available.

Specification

None

Summary

Script Tools enable authors to expose JavaScript APIs on their site for automated use by the user agent. They allow an author to annotate these APIs with descriptions and provide input schema, allowing automation frameworks a more specific method to access the site's functionality.

Blink component

Blink

Can you create a more specific issue component for this feature? 

Motivation

Automation over web pages is an increasingly active area. Currently, web APIs provide no direct way to interact with automation frameworks so these frameworks rely on simulating user input on pages. Script Tools aims to provide a way for participating web sites to provide automation-specific paths in their UI. Automation can then proceed more quickly and enables the web site's UI to react.

Initial public proposal

None

TAG review

None

TAG review status

Pending

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

None

Please fill out this section. 

Gecko: No signal

WebKit: No signal

Web developers: No signals

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

None

Debuggability

None

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

No

I assume this will be tested eventually. Are there any blockers to being able to test it with WPT?

 

Flag name on about://flags

None

Finch feature name

None

Non-finch justification

None

Requires code in //chrome?

True

Estimated milestones

No milestones specified

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5117755740913664?gate=5183588999626752

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

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[David Bokan]

Thanks! Filled these out in chromestatus - posting inline replies below as well.

On Wednesday, July 9, 2025 at 1:48:42 PM UTC-4 Reilly Grant wrote:

On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 9:36 AM David Bokan <bo...@chromium.org> wrote:

Contact emailsbo...@chromium.org, hvanopstal@chromium.org, khushalsagar@chromium.org

ExplainerNone - We're working to publish an explainer ASAP and will link it on this thread when it's available.

SpecificationNone

Summary

Script Tools enable authors to expose JavaScript APIs on their site for automated use by the user agent. They allow an author to annotate these APIs with descriptions and provide input schema, allowing automation frameworks a more specific method to access the site's functionality.

Blink componentBlink

Blink>WebML

Motivation

Automation over web pages is an increasingly active area. Currently, web APIs provide no direct way to interact with automation frameworks so these frameworks rely on simulating user input on pages. Script Tools aims to provide a way for participating web sites to provide automation-specific paths in their UI. Automation can then proceed more quickly and enables the web site's UI to react.

Initial public proposalNone

TAG reviewNone

TAG review statusPending

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

None

Please fill out this section. 

Given this is a new space and new API - there's no compatibility risk.

Usual risk related to other browser vendors not adopting the API apply. This API is meant to augment capabilities provided by browser add-ons and so non-adoption in other engines would have limited user-impact and thus we consider the risk to be low. 

Gecko: No signal

WebKit: No signal

Web developers: No signals

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

None

Debuggability

None

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?No

I assume this will be tested eventually. Are there any blockers to being able to test it with WPT?

That's right, the "No" is to currently but the intent is to eventually test in WPT as much as possible.

Since the API provides the user agent with the ability to call certain tools, we might need to extend the WPT harness to support this. At minimum the IDL and basic usage can and will be tested in WPT.

 

 

Flag name on about://flagsNone

Finch feature nameNone

Non-finch justificationNone

Requires code in //chrome?True

Estimated milestones

No milestones specified

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Statushttps://chromestatus.com/feature/5117755740913664?gate=5183588999626752

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

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[Reilly Grant]

On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 11:06 AM David Bokan <bo...@chromium.org> wrote:

Thanks! Filled these out in chromestatus - posting inline replies below as well.

On Wednesday, July 9, 2025 at 1:48:42 PM UTC-4 Reilly Grant wrote:

On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 9:36 AM David Bokan <bo...@chromium.org> wrote:

Contact emailsbo...@chromium.org, hvanopstal@chromium.org, khushalsagar@chromium.org

ExplainerNone - We're working to publish an explainer ASAP and will link it on this thread when it's available.

SpecificationNone

Summary

Script Tools enable authors to expose JavaScript APIs on their site for automated use by the user agent. They allow an author to annotate these APIs with descriptions and provide input schema, allowing automation frameworks a more specific method to access the site's functionality.

Blink componentBlink

Blink>WebML

Please create a sub-component for Script Tools under either Blink>WebML or Blink>AI because my team uses Blink>WebML for WebNN issues and is tracking this component with our internal project management tools so having non-WebNN issues filed here will cause confusion. 

[David Bokan]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 1:46 PM Reilly Grant <rei...@chromium.org> wrote:

Please create a sub-component for Script Tools under either Blink>WebML or Blink>AI because my team uses Blink>WebML for WebNN issues and is tracking this component with our internal project management tools so having non-WebNN issues filed here will cause confusion. 

Thanks - after some discussion with component owners I think we've agreed that Blink>AI>Agents would be a more suitable home so I'm in the process of creating that.

[David Bokan]

Our explainer is now up: https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/script-tools

[Brandon Walderman]

Hi David,

Our team recently published a very similar explainer at https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/WebModelContext/explainer.md

Would you be interested in collaborating in this area further at WICG?

Thanks,

Brandon W.

Microsoft Edge

[Jeffrey Yasskin]

Thanks for working on this, and it's good to see that Microsoft is also interested. I wanted to note that, as this gets closer to an Intent to Ship, the "Interoperability and Compatibility" section might need to focus on some entities that haven't traditionally been relevant to I2Ses. This API is for agentic browsers, so the relevant groups are the ones building agents, like Perplexity, Open AI, etc.

Jeffrey

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[David Bokan]

(Sorry for delay, I was OOO last week)

Thanks Jeffrey, that's a good point and one we've considered. We'll definitely be reaching out to those vendors as we seek feedback and alignment (and I'm sure the list will grow by the time we get to I2S).

Our team recently published a very similar explainer at https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/WebModelContext/explainer.md

Would you be interested in collaborating in this area further at WICG?

Indeed, happy that we converged to basically the same place :)

We'd be happy to collaborate!