Quickstart

Two paths. Do the first if you’re writing the code; do the second if a coding agent is.

You’ll need an API key from the dashboard. Set it as KERNEL_API_KEY — every SDK, the CLI, and the MCP server read it from the environment.

Path 1: write it yourself

Install an SDK

npm install @onkernel/sdk

pip install kernel

go get github.com/kernel/kernel-go-sdk

Create a browser and drive it

This creates a browser, runs Playwright code inside the browser’s VM, returns the result, and cleans up. No local Chromium, no CDP connection to manage.

import Kernel from '@onkernel/sdk';

const kernel = new Kernel();

const browser = await kernel.browsers.create({ timeout_seconds: 300 });
console.log('live view:', browser.browser_live_view_url);

try {
  const { result } = await kernel.browsers.playwright.execute(browser.session_id, {
    code: `
      await page.goto('https://news.ycombinator.com');
      return await page.$$eval('.titleline > a', (as) => as.slice(0, 5).map((a) => a.textContent));
    `,
  });
  console.log(result);
} finally {
  await kernel.browsers.deleteByID(browser.session_id);
}

from kernel import Kernel

kernel = Kernel()

browser = kernel.browsers.create(timeout_seconds=300)
print("live view:", browser.browser_live_view_url)

try:
    response = kernel.browsers.playwright.execute(
        browser.session_id,
        code="""
          await page.goto('https://news.ycombinator.com');
          return await page.$$eval('.titleline > a', (as) => as.slice(0, 5).map((a) => a.textContent));
        """,
    )
    print(response.result)
finally:
    kernel.browsers.delete_by_id(browser.session_id)

Open browser_live_view_url while it runs and you’ll watch the page load.

Pick your next decision

Two things determine the shape of everything after this: which control surface you use, and where your loop runs. How you drive the browser covers both.From there:

Behind a login? Managed auth.
Getting blocked? Bot anti-detection.
Running it repeatedly? Browser pools.
Deploying the agent? App Platform.
Worked examples by job: common use cases.

Path 2: hand it to your coding agent

Kernel publishes agent-readable surfaces — a docs index, a full docs corpus, official skills, and a hosted MCP server. Rather than pasting three links and hoping, paste this one prompt into Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, or whatever you use. It gets set up and completes a first task.

Copy this into your coding agent

Set up Kernel (cloud browsers for agents) in this project, then complete one task with it.

Context to read first:
- https://www.kernel.sh/llms.txt — what Kernel is and every machine endpoint
- https://www.kernel.sh/docs/llms.txt — the docs index; fetch the specific pages you need from it
- https://github.com/kernel/skills/blob/main/plugins/kernel-cli/skills/kernel-cli/SKILL.md — the Kernel CLI skill

Setup:
1. Install the CLI: `brew install kernel/tap/kernel` (or `npm install -g @onkernel/cli`). Confirm `kernel --version` >= v0.16.0.
2. Run `kernel auth`. If it isn't authenticated, run `kernel login`, tell me to finish the browser flow, and poll `kernel auth` every 5s for up to 5 minutes.
3. Install the Kernel skills for this repo's agent so you keep the CLI and SDK knowledge: `npx skills add kernel/skills`.
4. Optional, for tool-calling: connect the hosted MCP server at https://mcp.onkernel.com/mcp (streamable HTTP, OAuth).

First task:
Create a headful browser, print its live view URL for me, navigate to https://news.ycombinator.com,
return the top 5 story titles, then delete the browser. Use the playwright execution API rather than
a local Playwright install. Wrap the work in try/finally so the browser is always deleted.

Then tell me which of the three ways to run an agent loop (direct CDP, playwright execution API,
Kernel App Platform) fits what this project is doing, and why.

What the agent is reading

Surface	Size	What it’s for
`kernel.sh/llms.txt`	~3 KB	Hand-written. What Kernel is, when to use it, every machine endpoint. Start here.
`kernel.sh/docs/llms.txt`	~47 KB	Index of every docs page, for fetching the ones a task needs.
`kernel.sh/docs/llms-full.txt`	~950 KB	The whole docs corpus in one file, for agents with room for it.
Agent Skills	—	Kernel know-how installed into the agent, so it doesn’t re-read docs every session.
MCP server	—	Kernel’s API as tools, for agents that call tools instead of writing code.
OpenAPI 3.1	—	For generating a client or calling the REST API directly.

Overview

Start building

Plans & enterprise

Community

Path 1: write it yourself

Path 2: hand it to your coding agent

What the agent is reading

​Path 1: write it yourself

​Path 2: hand it to your coding agent

​What the agent is reading

Path 1: write it yourself

Path 2: hand it to your coding agent

What the agent is reading