Quickstart

Three steps to a first answer. On Outcrawl’s cloud there is no browser to install.

Install Scout

You need Node 22 or later, or Bun.

npm i @outcrawl/scout

Add your keys

An Outcrawl key for the browser, free at outcrawl.ai with 1,000 credits every month and no card needed. Then your model endpoint’s base URL (the part before /chat/completions), its key, and the model id it expects.

export OUTCRAWL_API_KEY=your-outcrawl-key
export SCOUT_BASE_URL=https://your-endpoint/v1
export SCOUT_API_KEY=your-model-key
export SCOUT_HANDS_MODEL=your-model-id

Give it a task

Save this as task.ts and run npx tsx task.ts.

task.ts

import { Scout } from '@outcrawl/scout';

const scout = new Scout({
  browser: 'outcrawl',
  models: {
    hands: {
      model: process.env.SCOUT_HANDS_MODEL!,
      baseURL: process.env.SCOUT_BASE_URL!,
      apiKey: process.env.SCOUT_API_KEY ?? '',
    },
  },
});

const result = await scout.run(
  'Go to https://books.toscrape.com, open the first book in the Poetry category and report its title and price.',
  {
    caps: { steps: 15, duration: '8m' },
    schema: {
      type: 'object',
      properties: { title: { type: 'string' }, price: { type: 'string' } },
      required: ['title', 'price'],
    },
    onStep: (step) => console.log(step.index, step.action.description),
  },
);

console.log(result.status, result.data);
console.log(result.replayUrl); // the whole run, step by step

You see each step as it happens, then something like completed { title: '...', price: '£..' } and the replay link.

browser: 'outcrawl' reads OUTCRAWL_API_KEY from the environment. Scout has no default model, so models.hands is the one thing it cannot run without. See models for the other jobs.

Run on your own machine instead

Install playwright-core (or puppeteer-core) and a browser, then change the one line:

npm i playwright-core && npx playwright install chromium

const scout = new Scout({
  browser: { launch: {} }, // was: browser: 'outcrawl'
  models: { hands: { /* unchanged */ } },
});

Pass browser: { launch: { headless: false } } to watch it work. Your models and your task stay the same. Replays come with the cloud, so replayUrl stays empty on your own browser.

Not writing the code yourself? Give this page to your coding agent and ask it to set Scout up and run your task.

Browsers

Every browser option, and what the cloud adds.

Running tasks

Caps, schemas, cancelling, and everything a result carries.

Get started

Configure

Resources

Run on your own machine instead

Browsers

Running tasks

​Run on your own machine instead

Browsers

Running tasks

Run on your own machine instead