development
automation
browser
LLMs
computer vision
What is Automate Browser-based workflows using LLMs and Computer Vision.?
Skyvern automates browser-based workflows using LLMs and computer vision. It provides a simple API endpoint to fully automate manual workflows on a large number of websites, replacing brittle or unreliable automation solutions. Skyvern relies on Vision LLMs to learn and interact with websites, making it resistant to layout changes and capable of operating on unfamiliar sites.
Documentation
Skyvern automates browser-based workflows using LLMs and computer vision. It provides a simple API endpoint to fully automate manual workflows on a large number of websites, replacing brittle or unreliable automation solutions.
Traditional approaches to browser automations required writing custom scripts for websites, often relying on DOM parsing and XPath-based interactions which would break whenever the website layouts changed.
Instead of only relying on code-defined XPath interactions, Skyvern relies on Vision LLMs to learn and interact with the websites.
Skyvern Cloud is a managed cloud version of Skyvern that allows you to run Skyvern without worrying about the infrastructure. It allows you to run multiple Skyvern instances in parallel and comes bundled with anti-bot detection mechanisms, proxy network, and CAPTCHA solvers.
If you'd like to try it out, navigate to app.skyvern.com and create an account.
from skyvern import Skyvern
skyvern = Skyvern()
task = await skyvern.run_task(prompt="Find the top post on hackernews today")
print(task)
Skyvern starts running the task in a browser that pops up and closes it when the task is done. You will be able to view the task from http://localhost:8080/history
You can also run a task on different targets:
from skyvern import Skyvern
# Run on Skyvern Cloud
skyvern = Skyvern(api_key="SKYVERN API KEY")
# Local Skyvern service
skyvern = Skyvern(base_url="http://localhost:8000", api_key="LOCAL SKYVERN API KEY")
task = await skyvern.run_task(prompt="Find the top post on hackernews today")
print(task)
How it works
Skyvern was inspired by the Task-Driven autonomous agent design popularized by BabyAGI and AutoGPT -- with one major bonus: we give Skyvern the ability to interact with websites using browser automation libraries like Playwright.
Skyvern uses a swarm of agents to comprehend a website, and plan and execute its actions:
This approach has a few advantages:
Skyvern can operate on websites it's never seen before, as it's able to map visual elements to actions necessary to complete a workflow, without any customized code
Skyvern is resistant to website layout changes, as there are no pre-determined XPaths or other selectors our system is looking for while trying to navigate
Skyvern is able to take a single workflow and apply it to a large number of websites, as it's able to reason through the interactions necessary to complete the workflow
Skyvern leverages LLMs to reason through interactions to ensure we can cover complex situations. Examples include:
If you wanted to get an auto insurance quote from Geico, the answer to a common question "Were you eligible to drive at 18?" could be inferred from the driver receiving their license at age 16
If you were doing competitor analysis, it's understanding that an Arnold Palmer 22 oz can at 7/11 is almost definitely the same product as a 23 oz can at Gopuff (even though the sizes are slightly different, which could be a rounding error!)
Skyvern has SOTA performance on the WebBench benchmark with a 64.4% accuracy. The technical report + evaluation can be found here
Performance on WRITE tasks (eg filling out forms, logging in, downloading files, etc)
Skyvern is the best performing agent on WRITE tasks (eg filling out forms, logging in, downloading files, etc), which is primarily used for RPA (Robotic Process Automation) adjacent tasks.
Advanced Usage# Control your own browser (Chrome)
⚠️ WARNING: Since Chrome 136, Chrome refuses any CDP connect to the browser using the default user_data_dir. In order to use your browser data, Skyvern copies your default user_data_dir to ./tmp/user_data_dir the first time connecting to your local browser. ⚠️
Just With Python Code
from skyvern import Skyvern
# The path to your Chrome browser. This example path is for Mac.
browser_path = "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
skyvern = Skyvern(
base_url="http://localhost:8000",
api_key="YOUR_API_KEY",
browser_path=browser_path,
)
task = await skyvern.run_task(
prompt="Find the top post on hackernews today",
)
Restart Skyvern service skyvern run all and run the task through UI or code
Run Skyvern with any remote browser
Grab the cdp connection url and pass it to Skyvern
from skyvern import Skyvern
skyvern = Skyvern(cdp_url="your cdp connection url")
task = await skyvern.run_task(
prompt="Find the top post on hackernews today",
)
Get consistent output schema from your run
You can do this by adding the data_extraction_schema parameter:
from skyvern import Skyvern
skyvern = Skyvern()
task = await skyvern.run_task(
prompt="Find the top post on hackernews today",
data_extraction_schema={
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"title": {
"type": "string",
"description": "The title of the top post"
},
"url": {
"type": "string",
"description": "The URL of the top post"
},
"points": {
"type": "integer",
"description": "Number of points the post has received"
}
}
}
)
Helpful commands to debug issues
skyvern run server
# Launch the Skyvern UI
skyvern run ui
# Check status of the Skyvern service
skyvern status
# Stop the Skyvern service
skyvern stop all
# Stop the Skyvern UI
skyvern stop ui
# Stop the Skyvern Server Separately
skyvern stop server
Docker Compose setup
Make sure you have Docker Desktop installed and running on your machine
Make sure you don't have postgres running locally (Run docker ps to check)
Clone the repository and navigate to the root directory
Run skyvern init llm to generate a .env file. This will be copied into the Docker image.
Fill in the LLM provider key on the docker-compose.yml. If you want to run Skyvern on a remote server, make sure you set the correct server ip for the UI container in docker-compose.yml.
Run the following command via the commandline:
docker compose up -d
Navigate to http://localhost:8080 in your browser to start using the UI
Important: Only one Postgres container can run on port 5432 at a time. If you switch from the CLI-managed Postgres to Docker Compose, you must first remove the original container:
docker rm -f postgresql-container
If you encounter any database related errors while using Docker to run Skyvern, check which Postgres container is running with docker ps.
Skyvern Features
Skyvern Tasks
Tasks are the fundamental building block inside Skyvern. Each task is a single request to Skyvern, instructing it to navigate through a website and accomplish a specific goal.
Tasks require you to specify a url, prompt, and can optionally include a data schema (if you want the output to conform to a specific schema) and error codes (if you want Skyvern to stop running in specific situations).
Skyvern Workflows
Workflows are a way to chain multiple tasks together to form a cohesive unit of work.
For example, if you wanted to download all invoices newer than January 1st, you could create a workflow that first navigated to the invoices page, then filtered down to only show invoices newer than January 1st, extracted a list of all eligible invoices, and iterated through each invoice to download it.
Another example is if you wanted to automate purchasing products from an e-commerce store, you could create a workflow that first navigated to the desired product, then added it to a cart. Second, it would navigate to the cart and validate the cart state. Finally, it would go through the checkout process to purchase the items.
Supported workflow features include:
Navigation
Action
Data Extraction
Loops
File parsing
Uploading files to block storage
Sending emails
Text Prompts
Tasks (general)
(Coming soon) Conditionals
(Coming soon) Custom Code Block
Livestreaming
Skyvern allows you to livestream the viewport of the browser to your local machine so that you can see exactly what Skyvern is doing on the web. This is useful for debugging and understanding how Skyvern is interacting with a website, and intervening when necessary
Form Filling
Skyvern is natively capable of filling out form inputs on websites. Passing in information via the navigation_goal will allow Skyvern to comprehend the information and fill out the form accordingly.
Data Extraction
Skyvern is also capable of extracting data from a website.
You can also specify a data_extraction_schema directly within the main prompt to tell Skyvern exactly what data you'd like to extract from the website, in jsonc format. Skyvern's output will be structured in accordance to the supplied schema.
File Downloading
Skyvern is also capable of downloading files from a website. All downloaded files are automatically uploaded to block storage (if configured), and you can access them via the UI.
Authentication
Skyvern supports a number of different authentication methods to make it easier to automate tasks behind a login. If you'd like to try it out, please reach out to us via email or discord.
🔐 2FA Support (TOTP)
Skyvern supports a number of different 2FA methods to allow you to automate workflows that require 2FA.
We love to see how Skyvern is being used in the wild. Here are some examples of how Skyvern is being used to automate workflows in the real world. Please open PRs to add your own examples!
The following command sets up your development environment to use pre-commit (our commit hook handler)
skyvern quickstart contributors
Navigate to http://localhost:8080 in your browser to start using the UI
The Skyvern CLI supports Windows, WSL, macOS, and Linux environments.
Documentation
More extensive documentation can be found on our 📕 docs page. Please let us know if something is unclear or missing by opening an issue or reaching out to us via email or discord.
Supported LLMs
Provider
Supported Models
OpenAI
gpt4-turbo, gpt-4o, gpt-4o-mini
Anthropic
Claude 3 (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus), Claude 3.5 (Sonnet)
Azure OpenAI
Any GPT models. Better performance with a multimodal llm (azure/gpt4-o)
AWS Bedrock
Anthropic Claude 3 (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus), Claude 3.5 (Sonnet)
https://api.together.xyz/v1, http://localhost:8000/v1, etc.
OPENAI_COMPATIBLE_API_VERSION
API version for OpenAI-compatible endpoint, optional
String
2023-05-15
OPENAI_COMPATIBLE_MAX_TOKENS
Maximum tokens for completion, optional
Integer
4096, 8192, etc.
OPENAI_COMPATIBLE_TEMPERATURE
Temperature setting, optional
Float
0.0, 0.5, 0.7, etc.
OPENAI_COMPATIBLE_SUPPORTS_VISION
Whether model supports vision, optional
Boolean
true, false
Supported LLM Key: OPENAI_COMPATIBLE
General LLM Configuration
Variable
Description
Type
Sample Value
LLM_KEY
The name of the model you want to use
String
See supported LLM keys above
SECONDARY_LLM_KEY
The name of the model for mini agents skyvern runs with
String
See supported LLM keys above
LLM_CONFIG_MAX_TOKENS
Override the max tokens used by the LLM
Integer
128000
Feature Roadmap
This is our planned roadmap for the next few months. If you have any suggestions or would like to see a feature added, please don't hesitate to reach out to us via email or discord.
Open Source - Open Source Skyvern's core codebase
Workflow support - Allow support to chain multiple Skyvern calls together
Improved context - Improve Skyvern's ability to understand content around interactable elements by introducing feeding relevant label context through the text prompt
Cost Savings - Improve Skyvern's stability and reduce the cost of running Skyvern by optimizing the context tree passed into Skyvern
Self-serve UI - Deprecate the Streamlit UI in favour of a React-based UI component that allows users to kick off new jobs in Skyvern
Workflow UI Builder - Introduce a UI to allow users to build and analyze workflows visually
Chrome Viewport streaming - Introduce a way to live-stream the Chrome viewport to the user's browser (as a part of the self-serve UI)
Past Runs UI - Deprecate the Streamlit UI in favour of a React-based UI that allows you to visualize past runs and their results
Auto workflow builder ("Observer") mode - Allow Skyvern to auto-generate workflows as it's navigating the web to make it easier to build new workflows
Prompt Caching - Introduce a caching layer to the LLM calls to dramatically reduce the cost of running Skyvern (memorize past actions and repeat them!)
Web Evaluation Dataset - Integrate Skyvern with public benchmark tests to track the quality of our models over time
Improved Debug mode - Allow Skyvern to plan its actions and get "approval" before running them, allowing you to debug what it's doing and more easily iterate on the prompt
Chrome Extension - Allow users to interact with Skyvern through a Chrome extension (incl voice mode, saving tasks, etc.)
Skyvern Action Recorder - Allow Skyvern to watch a user complete a task and then automatically generate a workflow for it
Interactable Livestream - Allow users to interact with the livestream in real-time to intervene when necessary (such as manually submitting sensitive forms)
Integrate LLM Observability tools - Integrate LLM Observability tools to allow back-testing prompt changes with specific data sets + visualize the performance of Skyvern over time
Langchain Integration - Create langchain integration in langchain_community to use Skyvern as a "tool".
If you want to chat with the skyvern repository to get a high level overview of how it is structured, how to build off it, and how to resolve usage questions, check out Code Sage.
Telemetry
By Default, Skyvern collects basic usage statistics to help us understand how Skyvern is being used. If you would like to opt-out of telemetry, please set the SKYVERN_TELEMETRY environment variable to false.
License
Skyvern's open source repository is supported via a managed cloud. All of the core logic powering Skyvern is available in this open source repository licensed under the AGPL-3.0 License, with the exception of anti-bot measures available in our managed cloud offering.
If you have any questions or concerns around licensing, please contact us and we would be happy to help.