Pixelbrowse

PixelBrowse — Screenshot-based Web Reading

Use pixelshot to capture any URL or document as tiled JPEG images, then read the images visually.

Requires the pixelshot command on PATH. If pixelshot is not found, install it (isolated, on PATH): uv tool install pixelrag (or pipx install pixelrag, or pip install pixelrag) — then retry. Don't go hunting for it in project venvs.

How to use

# Screenshot a URL (optimized for Claude's vision: 1568px tile height)
pixelshot <url> --output /tmp/pixelbrowse --tile-height 1568 --wait-network-idle

# Screenshot multiple URLs in parallel
pixelshot <url1> <url2> --output /tmp/pixelbrowse --tile-height 1568 --wait-network-idle --workers 4

# Wider viewport for desktop layouts
pixelshot <url> --output /tmp/pixelbrowse --tile-height 1568 --viewport-width 1280 --wait-network-idle

# Render a PDF
pixelshot document.pdf --output /tmp/pixelbrowse

IMPORTANT: Always use --tile-height 1568 for screenshots you will read visually. Claude's vision model downscales images with long edge > 1568px (Sonnet/Haiku) or 2576px (Opus). The default 8192px tile height will be downscaled and text becomes unreadable. Note that the tile height is also the emulated viewport height, so at 1568 an ordinary article is a dozen-plus tiles rather than one or two — the manifest tells you how many (see Workflow).

IMPORTANT: Always use --wait-network-idle for URLs. Without it, JavaScript-heavy pages (most modern sites / single-page apps) are captured before they finish rendering and come back blank or half-empty. It waits for the page's load event plus a brief network-quiet window so client-rendered content is actually on screen.

After rendering, read the tile images from the output directory to visually understand the content.

Workflow

1. Run pixelshot <url> --output /tmp/pixelbrowse --tile-height 1568 --wait-network-idle
2. Read /tmp/pixelbrowse/<domain>.png.tiles/tiles.json — the manifest of what was captured
3. Read every tile it lists, in order, not just tile_0000.jpg

Output path pattern: /tmp/pixelbrowse/<sanitized-url>.png.tiles/tile_NNNN.jpg

• For https://news.ycombinator.com → /tmp/pixelbrowse/news.ycombinator.com.png.tiles/tile_0000.jpg
• For https://example.com/page → /tmp/pixelbrowse/example.com_page.png.tiles/tile_0000.jpg

Read tiles.json rather than ls (or guessing at tile numbers) — it is one file read and it answers both questions the tile files can't:

{"url": "...", "page_height": 29184, "tile_height": 1568, "tiles": ["tile_0000.jpg", "..."], "complete": true}

• tiles — the full list. A long page is many tiles; reading only tile_0000.jpg on a 30,000px article means reading 5% of it. Read them all before summarising.
• complete: false — the capture is not trustworthy: pixelshot could not measure the page, so what you have is roughly one viewport of an unknown-length page. Say so in your answer rather than presenting it as the whole page. Re-running with --wait-network-idle (if it was omitted) or a different --viewport-width often fixes it.
• No tiles.json at all — the render failed. That is an error to report, not an empty page.

Crop & Zoom

If text or details are too small to read, crop the region of interest and re-read at full resolution. Pillow is always available (it's a pixelshot dependency):

python3 -c "from PIL import Image; Image.open('<tile_path>').crop((x1, y1, x2, y2)).save('/tmp/pixelbrowse/crop.png')"

• Coordinates are in pixels from the top-left corner of the tile
• Crop to roughly 800x800 or smaller for maximum clarity
• You can crop multiple times to inspect different regions
• Read the cropped image with the Read tool just like any other image

Use this whenever you see content but can't make out the details — tables, small labels, fine print, chart axes, etc.

Tips

• Output is tiled JPEG images — tile_0000.jpg is the top, higher numbers go down the page
• Use --viewport-width 1280 for desktop layouts, default 875 for mobile/article width
• Supports URLs (http/https), local HTML files, PDFs, and images
• Backend options: --backend cdp (default, fastest) or --backend playwright