Does Live Browser work on Hermes as well as OpenClaw?

Yes. On managed hosting the button, the viewer and the takeover behaviour are identical on both frameworks, because Live Browser is a property of the browser sidecar the instance is given rather than of the agent runtime.

Can I log into a website for my AI agent?

Yes. Open Live Browser, sign in yourself, then close the tab. The cookie stays in the browser profile on your instance, so the agent is already authenticated the next time it visits that site.

Do I need a VNC client or a browser extension?

No. The stream runs in an ordinary browser tab. There is nothing to install and no port to forward.

How do I turn Live Browser off?

There is no off switch by design. Once the viewer has been closed for a while, an idle reaper returns the browser to headless mode automatically.

Is it safe to share the live browser link my bot sends me?

No. The link is single-use and expires after thirty minutes, but whoever opens it first gets a browser session as the account owner. The bot only mints one into a chat it can prove is one-to-one, and sends the login-protected dashboard link everywhere else.

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Guide

Live Browser

Your agent already has a browser. Live Browser is the window onto it: a real Chromium running beside your instance, streamed into a tab, that you can watch and take over with your own mouse and keyboard. Same button on OpenClaw and on Hermes.

What Problem It Solves

A headless browser is fine right up to the moment a site asks for something only a human has: a password, a two-factor code, a cookie banner it cannot find, a captcha. Without a way in, the run just fails and the agent tells you it could not open the page.

Live Browser removes that dead end. The browser your bot drives is a normal Chromium with a screen, and the screen is streamed to you. When the agent stops at a login, you open Live Browser, sign in yourself, and close the tab. The session cookie stays in the browser profile, so the agent continues as a logged-in user on the next request — and on every later one, because the profile is persistent.

It is also the fastest way to answer “what is my bot actually doing?” You watch it click.

Open It

Go to openclawlaunch.com/dashboard and find your instance card. Live Browser sits in the button row, next to Connect Platforms.

First click switches the instance’s browser sidecar into its headed mode and opens the viewer. On a cold instance that swap takes a few seconds — the tab shows a “Starting Live Browser” placeholder while it happens.
Later clicks just open the viewer.
There is no off switch, on purpose. When the viewer has been closed for a while an idle reaper parks the browser back to headless by itself, so a viewer you forgot to close does not keep a screen running.

The button appears on running instances only, and only on nodes where the streaming route is provisioned — which today is every node we host on. Nothing to install: no VNC client, no browser extension, no port forwarding.

Taking Over

The viewer is interactive, not a video feed. Click into the page, type, scroll, accept a cookie dialog, solve a captcha, complete a two-factor prompt. What you do lands in the same browser profile the agent uses.

The pattern that works best:

Ask the bot to do the task. It opens the site and reports it needs a login.
Open Live Browser, sign in, and confirm you can see the logged-in page.
Close the tab and tell the bot to try again.

You only do this once per site. The next time the agent visits, it is already authenticated.

Getting the Link From Chat

You do not have to be at the dashboard. Ask your bot in any chat — “give me my live browser link” — and it hands back a short single-use link that opens the same viewer.

Those links are deliberately narrow:

Single use, and they expire thirty minutes after they are minted.
Unguessable, and they carry no long-lived credential.
Minted only into a chat we can prove is one-to-one with you. In a group chat, or a room where group and direct messages are indistinguishable from the address alone, the bot sends the dashboard link instead — which is behind your login.

That last rule matters: whoever opens a live link first gets a browser session as the account owner. Treat one like a password, and do not paste it into a group.

OpenClaw and Hermes

The feature is identical on both frameworks on managed hosting — same button, same viewer, same takeover behaviour — because it is a property of the browser sidecar your instance is given, not of the agent runtime inside it.

What differs is only what the agent does with the browser between your takeovers. On OpenClaw the browser is reached through its built-in browser tooling; see OpenClaw browser automation and the browser harness guide. On Hermes it is the browser harness described in Hermes browser harness. Either way, Live Browser shows you the same screen.

Self-Hosting the Same Thing

If you run your own instance rather than a managed one, the equivalent is to run Chromium with a display instead of headless, and expose that display over a browser viewer. In practice that means an X server plus a VNC server plus a websocket bridge and noVNC, in a container next to the agent, and pointing the agent’s browser tooling at that Chromium’s remote debugging endpoint rather than at a local headless one.

Two details are worth copying rather than rediscovering. Chromium in a container usually runs without its own sandbox, which makes the container the security boundary — so give it no extra Linux capabilities, no new privileges, its own network, and hard memory and process limits. And put an authenticating proxy in front of the websocket: a VNC endpoint reachable on the open internet is a remote session for anyone who finds it.

On managed hosting all of that is already wired, which is the honest reason most people use the button instead.

Live Browser vs Desktop

They are different windows. Live Browser shows the browser and nothing else. The Desktop button opens the instance’s own Linux desktop — a dock, a terminal, a file manager, and a launcher that brings this same browser in as one window among several.

Use Live Browser to unblock a web task. Use Desktop when you want to look at the machine itself. For files and shell alone, the lighter path is the web terminal and file manager.

Troubleshooting

No button on the card: the instance must be running. Start it and the button comes back.
The tab opens and stays on the placeholder: the sidecar is still swapping to its headed mode. Give it a few seconds. If it never resolves, restart the instance and click again.
A blank or grey viewer: usually a stalled stream rather than a broken browser. Close the tab and click Live Browser again to reconnect.
The agent still says it is logged out after you signed in: make sure you signed in inside the Live Browser tab, not in your own everyday browser. Only the profile inside the instance is shared with the agent.
The bot answers a “live browser link” request with a dashboard URL: it is in a chat it cannot prove is one-to-one. Ask again in a direct message.

Privacy, Plainly

Anything you type into Live Browser is typed into a browser inside your instance, and the cookies it stores live on your instance’s own volume. That is precisely what makes the login persist — and precisely why a live link is not something to share. If you would rather a site’s credentials never live in the agent’s profile, use a throwaway account for that site instead.

Try It

Deploy a bot from the homepage, ask it to open a site that needs a login, and use the Live Browser button the moment it stops. The whole loop takes about a minute.