> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://atlas.rebuildingus.org/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Headless browser rendering

> Control Scout's bounded Playwright fallback for JavaScript-rendered public pages.

Scout fetches ordinary HTML first. If a public page looks useful but exposes too
little readable text without JavaScript, Scout can render it with headless
Chromium through Playwright.

Browser rendering is a bounded fallback. It is not the primary fetch path.

## Defaults

| Setting                         | Default |
| ------------------------------- | ------: |
| Browser fallback enabled        |  `true` |
| Browser render attempts per run |     `8` |
| Concurrent browser renders      |     `1` |

Scout does not open visible browser windows.

## Install Chromium

For a source install:

```bash theme={null}
uvx --from playwright playwright install chromium
```

For a Homebrew install after the formula is published:

```bash theme={null}
$(brew --prefix atlas-scout)/libexec/bin/playwright install chromium
```

The Homebrew formula installs the Playwright Python package, but it does not
download Chromium during `brew install`.

## Configure The Budget

Disable browser fallback:

```bash theme={null}
scout config set scraper.browser_fallback_enabled false
```

Set the maximum browser renders per run:

```bash theme={null}
scout config set scraper.max_browser_renders_per_run 8
```

Keep browser concurrency low unless the computer is dedicated to crawling:

```bash theme={null}
scout config set scraper.max_browser_concurrent 1
```

Inspect the active profile:

```bash theme={null}
scout config show
```

## Article Crawls

Article crawls also use static fetch first. Set a crawl-level render budget:

```bash theme={null}
scout articles crawl \
  --seed https://example-news.org/sitemap.xml \
  --target-count 100 \
  --max-pages 1000 \
  --browser-renders 8 \
  --json
```

Use `--browser-renders 0` for a no-browser crawl.