LightPanda Setup Skill

A complete installation and configuration guide for LightPanda — the headless browser built for AI agents and automation.

What This Covers

• Binary installation (single curl)
• Verify + fetch test
• CDP server (Playwright/Puppeteer compatible)
• Systemd service for auto-start on boot
• MCP integration with Claude Code

Performance (vs Chrome, 933 real pages, AWS EC2 m5.large)

Metric	LightPanda	Chrome
Memory at idle	~892KB	~150MB+
Execution speed	9x faster	baseline
Memory usage	16x less	baseline
Startup	Instant	Slow

Quick Install (Linux x86_64)

curl -L -o /usr/local/bin/lightpanda https://github.com/lightpanda-io/browser/releases/download/nightly/lightpanda-x86_64-linux
chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/lightpanda

Test Fetch

LIGHTPANDA_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=true lightpanda fetch --dump markdown --strip-mode full https://example.com

Start CDP Server

LIGHTPANDA_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=true lightpanda serve --host 127.0.0.1 --port 9222 --log-level warn &
curl -s http://127.0.0.1:9222/json/version

Puppeteer Test

import puppeteer from 'puppeteer-core';
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({ browserWSEndpoint: 'ws://127.0.0.1:9222/' });
const page = await (await browser.createBrowserContext()).newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
console.log(await page.title());
await browser.disconnect();

Systemd Service

See lightpanda.service — copy to /etc/systemd/system/ and:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable lightpanda
sudo systemctl start lightpanda

MCP Integration (Claude Code)

Add to ~/.claude/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "lightpanda": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "/usr/local/bin/lightpanda",
      "args": ["mcp"],
      "env": {
        "LIGHTPANDA_DISABLE_TELEMETRY": "true"
      }
    }
  }
}

Commands

Command	Description
lightpanda fetch --dump markdown URL	Fetch URL as markdown
lightpanda fetch --dump html URL	Fetch URL as HTML
lightpanda serve --port 9222	Start CDP server
lightpanda mcp	Start MCP server
lightpanda version	Show version

Notes

• CORS is still pending (WIP) — SPAs relying on CORS may break
• Pin Playwright versions — new Web API additions can shift code paths
• AGPL-3.0 license
• 26k+ GitHub stars as of March 2026