Intel / article

A shot-scraper-style JSON API on Bun 1.4's new Bun.WebView

Source: simonwillison.net
Date: Published Aug 20, 2026

Context

Simon Willison had Claude Code for web build a small browser-automation service around Bun 1.4's experimental Bun.WebView interface. Willison's write-up describes a TypeScript API of roughly 150 lines that loads pages, runs JavaScript and returns screenshots or structured results, using one browser tab per request.

The service works without Puppeteer or Playwright, but a browser engine still does the page rendering. Bun can use macOS WebKit or control a local Chromium process. Willison reports that the prototype appears to need a 192–256 MB container to run a full Chrome against complex pages, tested using cgroups. That is an observation about this prototype and workload, useful for understanding its footprint rather than a universal browser-service requirement.

Terms in this piece · Glossary

eval — A repeatable test for AI quality — a set of tasks plus scoring — used the way software teams use test suites, because model output is too variable to judge by eyeballing.

Read the source simonwillison.net