The chrome-service stack ran `playwright launch-server`, which creates
ephemeral browser contexts per `connect()`. Despite the encrypted PVC
mounted at /profile, no chromium user-data ever persisted — only npm
cache + fontconfig. Logging in via noVNC was effectively a no-op.
Refactor:
- Replace launch-server with direct chromium (TCP CDP on :9223 internal),
fronted by a Python HTTP+WS bridge on :9222 that rewrites the Host
header to bypass Chrome's hardcoded DNS-rebinding protection (no
`--remote-allow-hosts` flag exists in stock Chrome 130; verified by
binary string grep). Bridge also forces Connection: close on HTTP
responses so Node ws opens a fresh TCP for the WS upgrade rather than
trying to reuse the dead keep-alive socket.
- Add `--user-data-dir=/profile/chromium-data` so cookies/localStorage
actually persist on the encrypted PVC.
- New snapshot-server sidecar (stdlib python HTTP) serves
GET /api/snapshot at chrome.viktorbarzin.me/api/snapshot,
bearer-token-gated by the existing api_bearer_token.
- New chrome-service-snapshot-harvester CronJob (hourly) connects via
CDP, dumps storage_state() (cookies + localStorage), writes atomically
to /profile/snapshots/storage-state.json.
- NetworkPolicy: TCP/9222 (was :3000), TCP/8088 added for traefik.
Caller migration:
- f1-stream: `chromium.connect(ws_url)` → `chromium.connect_over_cdp(cdp_url)`,
env var CHROME_WS_URL → CHROME_CDP_URL. CHROME_WS_TOKEN dropped (no
longer used by code; ExternalSecret kept for symmetry with the snapshot
endpoint).
Dev-box side (out of scope for this commit — see ~/.config/systemd/user/):
- playwright-mcp.service flips to `--isolated --storage-state=...`
so per-Claude-Code-session ephemeral contexts seed from the snapshot.
- playwright-snapshot-refresh.{service,timer} (hourly) pulls the
snapshot via the bearer-gated HTTPS endpoint.
Docs updated:
- docs/architecture/chrome-service.md — new architecture diagram + wire protocol.
- docs/runbooks/chrome-service-snapshot.md — day-2 ops (refresh, rotation,
failure modes, restore).
- stacks/chrome-service/README.md — connect_over_cdp recipe.
Design spec at docs/superpowers/specs/2026-06-04-playwright-per-session-browser-design.md.
The static nginx stub at chrome.viktorbarzin.me wasn't useful for
debugging anti-bot interactions. Swap it for a live noVNC HTML5 view
of the headed Chromium session: x11vnc taps Xvfb's :99 over localhost
TCP (added `-listen tcp -ac` to Xvfb), websockify wraps it as a WS
endpoint, and noVNC's vendored web client serves it on :6080.
The ingress chain is unchanged — chrome.viktorbarzin.me stays
Authentik-gated, dns_type=proxied, port 3000 (the Playwright WS) stays
internal-only behind the NetworkPolicy + token. Custom image
`registry.viktorbarzin.me/chrome-service-novnc:v4` (ubuntu:24.04 +
x11vnc + websockify + novnc apt packages) needs imagePullSecrets, so
also added registry-credentials reference to the deployment spec.
x11vnc flags: `-noshm -noxdamage -nopw -shared -forever`. SHM is
disabled because each container has its own /dev/shm so the X server
can't grant access; XDAMAGE isn't compiled into the noble Xvfb. The
sidecar entrypoint waits up to 30s for both Xvfb (:6099) and x11vnc
(:5900) to bind before exec'ing websockify.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The f1-stream verifier's in-process headless Chromium kept tripping
hmembeds' disable-devtool.js Performance detector (CDP latency on
console.log vs console.table) and getting redirected to google.com.
This adds a single-replica chrome-service stack running Playwright
launch-server under Xvfb so callers can connect via WS+token to a
shared headed browser. f1-stream's _ensure_browser now prefers
chromium.connect(CHROME_WS_URL/CHROME_WS_TOKEN) and adds a vendored
stealth init script (webdriver/plugins/languages/Permissions/WebGL
spoofs + querySelector hijack to disarm disable-devtool-auto) on
every new context. Falls back to in-process headless if the env
vars aren't set.
Encrypted PVC for profile + npm cache, NetworkPolicy to TCP/3000
gated by client-namespace label, 6h tar.gz backup CronJob to NFS,
Authentik-gated nginx sidecar at chrome.viktorbarzin.me for human
liveness checks. Image pinned to playwright:v1.48.0-noble in
lockstep with the Python client's playwright==1.48.0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
