Claude in Chrome is a Chrome extension that lets Claude Code control the browser you already have open.

The big difference from Playwright is that Playwright launches its own Chromium instance. That means if your app needs authentication, you have to deal with it — saving session cookies, writing an auth script, whatever. Claude in Chrome doesn’t bother with any of that. You’re already logged in, so Claude just… uses that.

Say you want to test a checkout flow on your staging environment that’s behind SSO. With Playwright you’d spend 20 minutes setting up session state. With Claude in Chrome, you just ask and it does it.

The one downside worth mentioning: it’s noticeably slower than playwright-cli. For quick, repeatable automation you’d still reach for Playwright. But for anything that needs real auth or a fast manual-style walkthrough, Claude in Chrome is just easier.