--- name: publish-through-a-browser-already-signed-in description: Post to a platform that has no usable API by driving a browser a person signed into by hand, and check the result as a stranger rather than as the author. runbook: schema_version: v1 semver: 1.0.0 profile: P1 min_runtime_profile: R1 domain: ci-cd targets: - linux trigger: manual execution: human-with-agent risk: reversible-write blast_radius: global duration: 5-30m capabilities: - cli:curl publisher: std lang: en license: CC-BY-4.0 inputs: debug_port: type: string required: true description: the debugging port the signed-in browser is listening on profile_dir: type: string required: true description: the browser profile directory holding the session for this account published_url: type: string required: false description: the address the run reported, for checking from outside steps: - id: s1 kind: check title: The signed-in browser is up and answering tool: cli:curl command: curl -sf http://127.0.0.1:{{inputs.debug_port}}/json/version expect: the browser answers with its version assert: exit_code: 0 on_fail: s2 next: s4 - id: s2 kind: action title: Start the browser by hand on its own profile risk: read-only expect: a window opens on the profile that holds this account's session on_fail: escalate:s11 next: s3 - id: s3 kind: check title: The port answers now tool: cli:curl command: curl -sf http://127.0.0.1:{{inputs.debug_port}}/json/version expect: the browser answers assert: exit_code: 0 on_fail: escalate:s11 next: s4 - id: s4 kind: check title: The session in that profile is still signed in expect: the platform shows the account as signed in, not a login form on_fail: escalate:s11 next: s5 - id: s5 kind: action title: Connect to the running browser, never launch one risk: read-only expect: the tool attaches to the browser that is already open on_fail: escalate:s11 next: s6 - id: s6 kind: action title: Write the post as a draft risk: reversible-write expect: a draft exists on the platform with the whole body in it rollback_ref: s10 on_fail: escalate:s11 next: s7 - id: s7 kind: check title: The draft carries the whole body expect: the draft's length and last paragraph match what was sent on_fail: escalate:s11 next: s8 - id: s8 kind: action title: A person presses publish risk: reversible-write requires_approval: true expect: the platform reports the post as published and returns its address rollback_ref: s10 on_fail: escalate:s11 next: s9 - id: s9 kind: check title: Open it from a profile signed into nothing expect: the whole post is visible — no paywall, no members-only wall, no login wall on_fail: escalate:s11 next: end:success - id: s10 kind: action title: Withdraw it, back to a draft risk: reversible-write expect: the address stops serving the post to anybody but its author next: end:aborted - id: s11 kind: escalate title: Escalate to whoever owns the account to: team:platform source: url: https://runbooks.directory/r/std/publish-through-a-browser-already-signed-in/source.md fetched_at: 2026-09-04 upstream_state: current --- ## When to reach for this A platform that matters has no API worth using — or an API that cannot post what you actually want to post — and the way to publish is the way a person does it: in a browser, signed in. Automating that is ordinary. Getting it wrong quietly is also ordinary, and the two failures below are the ones that cost the most. ## Connect to a browser; never launch one The tool attaches to a browser a person started. It does not start one. This is the whole arrangement, and it is not a preference. A browser the automation starts is a browser with no session: it has never been signed in, and it cannot be signed in without putting the account's password somewhere the automation can read. Attaching to one a person opened means the credentials were typed by the person who owns them, once, into the browser that holds them. So the run's first question is whether that browser is up, and its first failure is a port that does not answer. Ask the debugging port for its version before doing anything else — it is one request, and it distinguishes "nobody started the browser" from every other problem that would otherwise surface as a confusing timeout in the middle of a post. ## The profile directory is not a cache The session lives in the browser's profile directory, and there is exactly one copy of it. It is not reproducible: no build regenerates it, nothing in a repository contains it, and losing it means every account signs in again by hand. Profile directories are often kept somewhere that reads as disposable — a cache path, a temporary directory, a dot-directory nobody documents. Anything that reclaims disk space by looking at directory names will find it. Keep it somewhere named for what it is, and say in the same breath that it holds the only copy of the logins. Two mistakes worth naming, because both have happened. A directory whose name reads as throwaway gets deleted during a clean-up — and the second is subtler: a profile inside a container looks empty from outside, because the profile is in a hidden path and a plain listing shows nothing. Look with hidden files shown before concluding a profile directory is unused. ## Which port belongs to which account lives with the account More than one account means more than one profile and more than one port. Where that mapping lives matters: in the repository it is configuration that drifts from the machine it describes, and the failure is publishing as the wrong person. Keep it beside the account's own record — the same row that says who publishes and with what — so that changing an account and changing its port are one edit rather than two, and the second one cannot be forgotten. ## Check it as a stranger, because you are not one This is the step that gets skipped, and it is the reason the procedure has a profile signed into nothing. **An author always sees their own post in full.** Paywalls, members-only gates and login walls are invisible from the account that wrote the thing. Opening the published address in the same browser proves only that the post exists, which was never in doubt. So keep one profile deliberately signed into nothing, and open the result there. It is the only way to see what a reader sees, and it costs one browser window. ## The last press is a person's Where the platform allows a draft, stop at the draft and let a person publish it. Not ceremony: the draft is where the formatting is checked, and formatting is what breaks — a body pasted in pieces, a title taken from the wrong line, a code block that arrived as prose. A draft that is wrong is a draft; a post that is wrong is a post somebody read. ## What an agent may do here, and where it stops `execution: human-with-agent`. An agent can attach, write the draft and check it; the publish carries `requires_approval` because it is the step that becomes public and the one step here that no check performed beforehand can take back. Several steps name no tool and the linter says so — starting a browser, seeing that a session is still signed in, opening a page as a stranger. The warning is right and is left standing: those steps are the human half of a human-with-agent procedure, a supervisor has nothing to scope for them, and a record that suppressed the warning would be claiming supervision it does not have. What it costs is trust, which is the correct price.