Managed Agents is Anthropic’s hosted runtime for Claude. Anthropic provisions the container, the tool harness, and the agent loop — you supply a system prompt, a toolset, and start a session. Pair a Managed Agent with a Browserbase session and Claude can navigate, click, and extract data on the open web without you hosting a browser fleet. This integration connects the two surfaces:Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.browserbase.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
- Managed Agents runs Claude in an Anthropic-managed sandbox with
bash, file tools, and any custom tools you declare. - Browserbase provides the isolated Chromium session the agent connects to over CDP, plus Live View, session recordings, and Agent Identity.
Managed Agents is in beta. All requests use the
managed-agents-2026-04-01 beta header — the Anthropic SDKs set it automatically. See Anthropic’s docs for current status.Why pair them
Claude needs two things to browse the web reliably: a durable runtime to hold the loop, and a real browser to drive the page. Running either one yourself is painful.- Anthropic owns the runtime. No Lambda cold starts, no container orchestration, no token streaming plumbing. Start a session and Anthropic runs the agent loop to completion.
- Browserbase owns the browser. No Chromium pinning, no fingerprint maintenance, no crashed-session cleanup. Every run gets a fresh, isolated sandbox with observability baked in.
- The split keeps state clean. Managed Agents holds the conversation and tool outputs. Browserbase holds the page, cookies, and downloads. You can inspect either side independently.
Core concepts
Managed Agents is built around four primitives. You’ll see them throughout this integration.| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Agent | The model, system prompt, tools, MCP servers, and skills. Created once and referenced by ID. |
| Environment | A configured container template — pre-installed packages, mounted files, network rules. |
| Session | A running agent instance inside an environment, performing a task and producing events. |
| Events | Messages exchanged between your app and the agent — user turns, tool results, status updates. |
How it works
Create the agent and environment
You call
client.beta.agents.create(...) and client.beta.environments.create(...) once to register the system prompt, toolset, and packages Claude will have available. Anthropic returns an agent.id and environment.id you reuse across sessions.Start a session
For each user request, you call
client.beta.sessions.create(...) with the agent and environment IDs. Anthropic provisions the sandbox, installs the declared packages, and gets ready to run the loop.Send a message and stream events
Open an SSE stream against the session and send a
user.message event. Claude starts working — emitting agent.message, agent.tool_use, and tool-result events back over the stream until it goes idle.Claude creates a Browserbase session
Inside the sandbox, Claude creates a Browserbase session — either with
curl directly against the Browserbase REST API or with bb sessions create from the Browserbase CLI. Both return a connectUrl and a sessionId.Claude drives the browser
Claude issues
browse commands against the session — open, screenshot, snapshot, click, type — over CDP. You watch progress in Live View or surface events back to your own UI through the session event stream.What the stack looks like
| Layer | Owner | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Agent loop, tool execution, conversation state | Anthropic Managed Agents | Runs Claude to completion in a sandbox |
bash, file tools, web search, custom tools | Anthropic Managed Agents | Built-in toolset, plus any custom tool you declare |
browse CLI or Stagehand | Your code (runs inside the sandbox) | Translates Claude’s intent into CDP actions |
| Chromium session, Live View, recordings | Browserbase | Isolated browser with observability and Agent Identity |
When to use this
Use Managed Agents with Browserbase when:- You want Claude to browse the web but don’t want to host the agent loop yourself.
- You need persistent conversation state across many tool calls (Slack bots, long research tasks, queued jobs).
- You want Anthropic-side tool-use traces for debugging alongside Browserbase session recordings.
- You’re building a chat surface (Slack, Discord, a web app) where each thread is a long-running agent session with steering.
- You’re already building a general-purpose Managed Agent and want to add web browsing as another capability alongside its existing tools.
Getting started
Quickstart
Create a Managed Agent, start a session, and drive a Browserbase session end to end.
Browse CLI
The lightweight entry point Claude uses inside the sandbox to control Browserbase.
Further reading
Managed vs self-hosted
Why managed Browserbase sessions beat self-hosted Chromium in production.
Session Live View
Watch a Managed Agent drive a browser in real time.
Agent Identity
Verified browsers, proxies, and authentication for agents on the open web.