Plan: I’ll (1) suggest the simplest way to give your VPS a real browser (headless Chromium) your bot can drive, (2) provide copy-paste install commands for common VPS OSes, and (3) show two working approaches: Playwright (recommended) or Puppeteer/Selenium, including a tiny test script to prove it works.


You’ve basically got 3 solid ways to give a VPS “Chrome” so your Clawdbot can browse:

1. **Use Playwright + bundled Chromium (easiest, most reliable)**
2. **Install system Chromium/Chrome and drive it with Playwright/Puppeteer/Selenium**
3. **Run a remote browser (Chromium in Docker / browserless) and connect to it over CDP**

Below are copy-paste recipes for each. If you follow **Option A**, you usually don’t need Chrome “installed” at all—Playwright downloads a compatible Chromium for you.

---

## Option A (recommended): Playwright with its own Chromium

### Node.js

```bash
# in your bot project folder
npm i playwright
npx playwright install --with-deps chromium
```

Quick test:

```bash
node - <<'NODE'
const { chromium } = require('playwright');
(async () => {
  const browser = await chromium.launch({ headless: true });
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com', { waitUntil: 'domcontentloaded' });
  console.log(await page.title());
  await browser.close();
})();
NODE
```

### Python

```bash
pip install playwright
python -m playwright install --with-deps chromium
```

Quick test:

```bash
python - <<'PY'
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
with sync_playwright() as p:
    b = p.chromium.launch(headless=True)
    page = b.new_page()
    page.goto("https://example.com", wait_until="domcontentloaded")
    print(page.title())
    b.close()
PY
```

**Why this works:** your bot stops caring whether “Chrome” exists system-wide because Playwright brings a browser runtime that “just works” on servers.

---

## Option B: Install Chromium/Chrome on the VPS and point your bot at it

### Ubuntu / Debian (Chromium)

```bash
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y chromium-browser || sudo apt-get install -y chromium
chromium --version || chromium-browser --version
```

If your bot wants `google-chrome` specifically, install Google Chrome (Ubuntu/Debian):

```bash
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y wget gnupg ca-certificates
wget -qO- https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/google-linux.gpg
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/google-linux.gpg] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y google-chrome-stable
google-chrome --version
```

Then in Playwright/Puppeteer/Selenium, set the executable path, e.g. Playwright (Node):

```js
const browser = await chromium.launch({
  headless: true,
  executablePath: '/usr/bin/google-chrome' // or /usr/bin/chromium
});
```

**Common gotcha on VPS:** you often need these launch args (especially in containers):

* `--no-sandbox`
* `--disable-dev-shm-usage`

Example:

```js
const browser = await chromium.launch({
  headless: true,
  args: ['--no-sandbox','--disable-dev-shm-usage']
});
```

---

## Option C: Remote “browser service” (great if you want stability + scaling)

Run a headless browser in Docker and connect to it:

### Browserless (CDP endpoint)

```bash
docker run -d --name browserless -p 3000:3000 --restart unless-stopped browserless/chrome
```

Then connect from Puppeteer:

```js
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');
(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.connect({ browserWSEndpoint: 'ws://127.0.0.1:3000' });
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  console.log(await page.title());
  await browser.close();
})();
```

This is awesome if you want the bot and the browser isolated, or you run multiple bots.

---

## If your Clawdbot uses a “browser tool” abstraction

Many agents/frameworks assume a Chrome binary exists at one of:

* `/usr/bin/google-chrome`
* `/usr/bin/chromium`
* `/usr/bin/chromium-browser`

So after installing via **Option A**, you may still need to **tell it the executable path** (or configure it to use Playwright’s bundled one). If the framework only checks for `google-chrome`, **Option B** fixes it immediately.

---

## Fastest “do this now” path

If you want the least fuss on a typical Ubuntu VPS:

```bash
# Node bot
npm i playwright
npx playwright install --with-deps chromium
```

…and change your bot’s “browse” implementation to Playwright (or point its browser executable to Playwright’s chromium, if your framework supports it).

---

If you tell me **(1)** your VPS OS (Ubuntu/Debian/etc) and **(2)** whether Clawdbot is **Node or Python** and what it uses (Puppeteer/Selenium/Playwright/“browser tool”), I’ll give you the exact minimal config lines for *your* setup.