Integration: Neo CLI works with Lightpanda as headless backend

[4ier]

Hey team! 👋

I maintain Neo — a CLI tool that turns any web app into an AI-callable API via CDP. Think of it as a developer-facing bridge between AI agents and web applications.

Just shipped Lightpanda support in Neo v1.4.1 (PR). All core commands work out of the box:

Command	What it does	Status
neo connect	Attach to CDP server	✅
neo open <url>	Navigate to page	✅
neo read	Extract readable text	✅
neo snapshot	Full accessibility tree with @ref mapping	✅
neo click @ref	Click by a11y ref	✅
neo eval	Run JS in page context	✅

Setup

npm install -g @4ier/neo
# ~/.neo/config.json
{
  "chromePath": "/path/to/lightpanda",
  "browserType": "lightpanda",
  "cdpPort": 9222
}

Then neo start launches Lightpanda's CDP server, and all Neo commands work against it.

CDP compatibility notes

A few things I handled during integration that might be useful for your docs:

1. /json/list not implemented — Neo falls back to Target.createTarget + Target.attachToTarget. Works great.
2. params key required in CDP messages — Sending {id, method} without params returns InvalidParams. Adding params: {} fixes it. This differs from Chrome which accepts missing params.
3. Context tied to WebSocket lifetime — Each WS connection gets its own browsing context. Neo uses a persistent connection pool to handle this.

These are minor and easy to work around. The CDP core (Runtime, DOM, Accessibility, Input, Network, Page, Target) is solid. Impressive work for a from-scratch browser! 🚀

Use case

Neo + Lightpanda is a great combo for AI agents that need fast, low-memory web interaction — exactly the scenario Lightpanda is built for. Happy to add Lightpanda to Neo's README as a recommended backend if you're interested.

Repo: https://github.com/4ier/neo

[krichprollsch]

Thank you so much for your feedback @4ier, I really appreciate 🙏

/json/list not implemented — Neo falls back to Target.createTarget + Target.attachToTarget. Works great.

Creating a target is the way to go w/ LP. If we implement /json and /json/list I think will always return an empty list, at least for now. The target is linked w/ the current ws connection and there is no real sense to list the targets from the HTTP endpoint. Once you disconnect, everything is released. Do you think an empty list is better than a 404? I see the risk of misunderstanding in comparison w/ chrome.

params key required in CDP messages — Sending {id, method} without params returns InvalidParams. Adding params: {} fixes it. This differs from Chrome which accepts missing params.

It's a good point, we can take a look at it.

Context tied to WebSocket lifetime — Each WS connection gets its own browsing context. Neo uses a persistent connection pool to handle this.

That's the way to go too w/ LP. Maybe it can change in the future, but we're happy this way for now.

Neo + Lightpanda is a great combo for AI agents that need fast, low-memory web interaction — exactly the scenario Lightpanda is built for. Happy to add Lightpanda to Neo's README as a recommended backend if you're interested.

That would be great! maybe we can start a page listing cool projects using Lightpanda 🤔

[krichprollsch]

FYI @4ier we added your project on the new https://github.com/lightpanda-io/awesome-lightpanda repo.

[krichprollsch]

#2122 offers to return [] on /json/list and /json. I think it will be a start.