barebrowse prunes ARIA snapshots to reduce tokens for local model agents

The author introduces barebrowse, a tool that converts URLs into pruned ARIA snapshots to reduce token usage for local model agents. By stripping navigation, ads, and boilerplate, the semantic tree consumes far fewer tokens than raw HTML.

• It drives existing browsers like Chrome or Brave directly over CDP, eliminating the need for Playwright or bundled Chromium.
• The tool reuses cookies from the user's real browser profile, allowing access to logged-in pages without scripting.
• Implemented in vanilla JS with ES modules and Node 22+, it includes an MCP server and CLI for easy integration.

This approach helps users who have context windows as a bottleneck by providing a more efficient way to feed web content to local models.