Browserbase rebuilt Stagehand v3 to control browsers directly through Chrome DevTools Protocol, removing its dependency on the Playwright testing framework. The company says this reduces communication overhead and gives it more control over embedded pages and multiple tabs. In its tests of embedded frames and encapsulated page components, v3 completed actions about 44% faster than v2. That figure describes this test suite, rather than every browser workflow. The release article also describes caching previously discovered actions so repeat operations can avoid another model call.
