jevnav

Page truth for browser agents — and decisions that replay, test and audit.

jevnav-8bit-intro.mp4

jevnav is a browser layer for agents and tests. It reads a page as facts (structure, computed styles, the controls on screen), lets Jev — TypeSafe's model for structured questions — pick the element for an intent with a calibrated probability, gates risky or uncertain actions to a human, and records every decision in a trace that replay re-checks offline in CI.

• Page truth, not pixels. outline, styles and diff return what the browser resolved — font-size 32px → 28px between a mockup and the running app is something an agent can fix. No screenshots in the decision loop.
• Evidence, not confidence. Each decision carries its probability, the gate verdict and its cost. A site change that breaks a recorded decision makes replay exit 1 — no model call, no API key.
• Works where your agent works. CLI, Python/pytest, an MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and friends, and a GitHub Action.

Why it exists — selector tests break when a label changes; LLM browser agents are confident, unauditable and occasionally wrong: docs/why.md.

Install

uv tool install jevnav          # or: pip install jevnav  (the MCP server is included)
playwright install chromium     # one-time browser download

Requires Python 3.10+. Deciding (go, run, browse, goal) needs a TypeSafe API key in TYPESAFE_API_KEY or ~/.config/typesafe/apikey.txt. replay, diff, outline and styles need no key — that is the point.

Quickstart

1. Let Jev drive — state a goal and the outcome that proves it:

jevnav go --goal "sign in with the demo account and open the pricing page" \
  --start https://app.example.com/login \
  --context email=demo@example.com --context password="${ACME_PASSWORD}" \
  --success "#pricing.visible" \
  --report goal.md

status: done — outcome verified against the page
steps: 5 — auto 4, review 0, blocked 0

One Jev request per step; every step is gated and traced. The loop stops when the goal is met, when nothing on the page can make progress (stuck), when the gate wants a human (review), when the page stops changing (no_progress), or at --max-steps. done is a claim — --success turns it into evidence (verified, or unverified and the run fails). --dry-run decides without acting.

2. Or script the flow and let Jev resolve each intent:

# flows/acme-login/flow.yaml
id: acme-login
start: https://app.example.com/login
steps:
  - intent: "Sign in to the existing account"
    action: click
  - intent: "Type the password"
    action: fill
    value: "${ACME_PASSWORD}"   # read from the environment, never written to the trace
  - intent: "Submit the login form"
    action: click

jevnav run flows/acme-login/flow.yaml --report run.md

3. Replay it in CI — offline, deterministic, no key:

jevnav replay acme-login.trace.jsonl            # re-resolve every recorded decision
jevnav replay acme-login.trace.jsonl --execute  # also re-run the actions + check --success

steps 3  verdicts: ok 3

Change Sign in to Log in on the site and the same replay fails:

[01] changed   Sign in to the existing account
      no element now has 'button|sign in' (was 'Sign in' / 'button')

Exit code 1, with the reason. That is the regression test.

Page truth for your agent

The facts a coding agent needs about a rendered page, without a screenshot: outline(selector) for a region's structure (tags, headings, text, boxes), styles(selector, props) for the computed values, page_state() for the controls jevnav can act on.

jevnav diff compares a mockup with the running app as facts and exits 1 on drift:

jevnav diff new-ui.html http://localhost:3000 --report ui-diff.md

element	property	mockup	app
h1 [Pricing]	font-size	32px	28px
button#cta [Start free]	border-radius	8px	4px

The report also lists structure differences (missing, new and moved elements; boxes compared with a 4px --tolerance). The loop for "here is a new UI, update the codebase": the agent reads both pages with jevnav, edits the code itself, re-runs diff until it exits 0, then pins the outcome with goal(..., success="<selector>") so replay --execute keeps checking it. jevnav reports; it never edits your repository and never compares pixels.

Gates

Every decision gets one of three verdicts:

verdict	meaning
auto	confidence at or above the threshold and nothing risky — the action runs
review	a human confirms first: low p, a risky intent, or a truncated candidate list
blocked	no decision was possible (the model answered none, or the call failed)

review and blocked never execute. Thresholds and risky patterns live in an optional gates.yaml; defaults ship for nine languages:

# flows/acme-login/gates.yaml
min_confidence: 0.9        # scripted flows: one question per step, well calibrated
loop_min_confidence: 0.5   # goal loop: four questions at once, p runs lower
risky:
  - "\\b(delete|remove|purchase|pay)\\b"   # matched against intent + element name + role
intents:
  "delete the *": { min_confidence: 0.99 }
truncated: review          # the page had more than 255 candidates

The goal loop uses a lower threshold on purpose: measured correct loop decisions land at p 0.41–0.99 and wrong ones at 0.39–0.47, so its safety comes from deterministic checks instead — fill on a button is refused, a field with no context value is blocked, two steps that change nothing stop the run, risky patterns always go to review, and the outcome is verified against --success.

MCP server

claude mcp add --scope user jevnav -- uvx jevnav mcp

Or, for Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code and other clients:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jevnav": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["jevnav", "mcp"],
      "env": { "TYPESAFE_API_KEY": "..." }
    }
  }
}

No URL or flags needed: the agent opens pages with goto, one server serves every site, and each session writes an auditable jevnav-session.trace.jsonl (--no-trace opts out). The deciding tools are what no other browser MCP has:

tool	what it does
browse(intent, action, value, min_confidence)	one step: Jev picks the element, the gate decides, only auto acts
goal(goal, context_json, max_steps, success)	drive the whole way; returns done / stuck / review plus the verification
goto(url) · page_state() · summary()	open a page, list what jevnav can act on, session totals

Plus 28 acting and inspecting tools (forms, keys, uploads, tabs, console, network, styles, outline, emulation, tracing, Lighthouse), each with MCP annotations so the host knows which calls change state. A decision costs about $0.00004 and ~330ms, and the page never enters the LLM's context. Full tool reference, security flags and when to pick jevnav vs. Playwright or chrome-devtools-mcp: docs/mcp.md.

CI — GitHub Action

- uses: dtduc-git/jevnav@v0
  with:
    trace: examples/local-demo/demo.trace.jsonl
    execute: "true"          # also re-run the recorded actions
    report: replay.md

No model call, no API key, ~30 seconds. Fails when a recorded target changed, became ambiguous, or a recorded --success selector is no longer visible. Inputs: trace, report, execute, json, version (default latest from PyPI, or local for a checkout). @v0 floats; pin a release tag such as @v0.2.2 for fully reproducible CI.

pytest

The jev fixture ships with the package: an ordinary Playwright test gets Jev decisions, and every test writes a trace that replays in CI.

def test_sign_in(jev):
    jev.goto("https://app.example.com/login")
    jev.fill("the email address", "demo@example.com")
    jev.fill("the password field", "${DEMO_PASSWORD}")
    jev.click("the sign-in button")
    jev.expect("#welcome")

DEMO_PASSWORD=... pytest --jev-trace-dir=traces
DEMO_PASSWORD=... jevnav replay --execute traces/test_sign_in.trace.jsonl   # offline, no key

A review verdict fails the test before the action runs, ${VAR} values are recorded by name only, and jev.page is the real Playwright page for everything else. Runnable example with a committed trace: examples/pytest-interop/.

Your own browser

jevnav go --goal "..."                                          # fresh headless Chromium (default)
jevnav go --goal "..." --user-data-dir ~/.cache/jevnav-profile --headed   # persistent profile
jevnav go --goal "..." --cdp http://127.0.0.1:9222              # attach to a running Chrome

Log in once with --headed and every later run reuses the profile; --cdp drives the Chrome you already have open, keeps its own settings (so it refuses --user-data-dir, --locale, --timezone and --user-agent) and never closes it. Both work on run, go, replay and mcp, and so does --browser for firefox or webkit (plus --locale, --timezone, --user-agent). Profile paths and cookies never reach a trace.

Evidence

what	result	source
element picks on real sites (9 sites, jev-1.13.0)	41/41 scored cases correct; 30/30 at the p ≥ 0.9 gate	research/browser-element-selection.md
decision latency and cost	p50 365ms, $0.000153 per decision	same
goal loop (local fixture, 4 goals × 2 wordings)	8/8 goals correct, incl. the impossible one (stuck)	docs/evidence.md
driving tasks vs. chrome-devtools-mcp (same LLM, n=2)	jevnav 8/8, chrome-devtools-mcp 6/8; chrome-devtools 2.4× faster end to end	research/driving-benchmark.md
replay	deterministic: offline, no key, exit 1 on a broken decision	run it on your own traces

Small samples with a single annotator: read them as direction, not proof. jevnav's advantage is decision cost and evidence, not wall-clock speed on small pages. Method, caveats and the tool-level comparison: docs/evidence.md.

How it works

• A shortlist, not the page. Visible interactive elements from every frame and open shadow root, ranked by how likely a human would act on them and capped at 120 (--max-candidates, hard cap 254). Each carries role, accessible name, type, href, placeholder and a scope, so three "Email" fields stay distinguishable.
• One question per step. The shortlist plus none becomes a choice question; Jev answers with one element and its probability.
• Fingerprints, never positions. An element's identity is role|name. The trace stores every candidate's fingerprint as the model saw it, and actions and replay resolve by fingerprint with a uniqueness check, so a shifted page cannot click the wrong thing.
• Replay verdicts. ok, moved, changed, ambiguous, error — the last three fail. --normalize REGEX relaxes known churn such as Cart (3) → Cart (4); strict is the default.

The trace format is a public contract: SPEC.md. Interactive architecture diagram: docs/architecture.html. Beyond the web: docs/games.md (Jev playing a game from structured state, measured against a random control).

Non-goals

• Not a planner. go/goal drive toward a goal you state; deciding what to do stays with you or your agent — jevnav decides where, and records why.
• No pixel decisions. No screenshots or canvas vision in the decision loop (screenshot exists for humans), and no text generation — fill values come from your flow, context or environment.
• No hosted service, no telemetry. Nothing leaves the machine except the question sent to your configured Jev endpoint.

Privacy

Traces contain page URLs, element names and your actions — never screenshots. The goal loop also sends a short digest of the page's visible text and current form values (passwords masked); scripted flows send neither. ${ENV} values are recorded by name only. Add *.trace.jsonl to your .gitignore and audit a trace before sharing it. See SECURITY.md for the authority boundary of the MCP server.

Suite

jevnav is the browser piece of a verification stack: mcplint (MCP configs), harnessguard (agent harnesses), jevassert + jev-packs (calibrated decision packs), and jev-table.

License

Apache-2.0 · Releases and changelog