--- schema: 1 type: video title: >- The Dark Arts of Web Automation: Teaching Agents to Use Websites Like Humans — Corey Gallon, Rexmore description: >- Preparing this talk got Corey Gallon a warning from OpenAI that his account faced a ban for cyber abuse with a web browser. The offending work was an agent clearing Cloudflare Turnstile, two image captchas, and finally reCAPTCHA v2 with no human in the loop. His premise fits on one slide: a browser driven through the Chrome DevTools Protocol is just a meat bag with a mouse, because the agent's clicks and keystrokes travel the same path inside Chrome that yours do. Chrome stamps every event as trusted or untrusted, which is why a synthetic JavaScript click that works fine in Outlook gets silently dropped by Amazon's add to cart button. The method is a loop of sense, act, verify, climbed up a three rung ladder only as high as the page forces. A synthetic click first, then a real CDP input event, then a human mouse path with jitter and a deliberate overshoot. He argues for a CLI over an MCP server on speed rather than capability, citing a study where both cleared tasks about 83% of the time while MCP took 71 round trips and eight minutes against seven turns and under a minute. That gap decides the last fight, because reCAPTCHA rounds expire on a clock. His solution splits the work: deterministic code drives the whole challenge and rearms itself, and the agent is called in only to look at the grid and name the tiles. Everything demonstrated runs on infrastructure and accounts he owns. Speaker info: - https://x.com/coreygallon - https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreygallon - https://gallon.me - https://github.com/captivus/chrome-agent Timestamps: 0:00 - Threatened with a ban for preparing this talk 1:50 - The premise: a CDP browser is a meat bag with a mouse 2:43 - Why a CLI beats an MCP server 4:06 - The DevTools Protocol and the agent's digital senses 5:47 - The loop: sense, act, verify 6:38 - The three rung ladder 8:27 - Rung one: batch emails, and the web UI as a permissionless API 10:44 - Rung two: trusted clicks and the add to cart button 12:51 - Rung three: Cloudflare Turnstile 14:26 - Image captchas, drag puzzles, and human motion 16:36 - Final boss: reCAPTCHA v2, solver and operator 19:47 - The methodology is the takeaway --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/26RtyAm9y_Q-the-dark-arts-of-web-automation-teaching-agents-to-use-websites-like-humans Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- canonical: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/the-dark-arts-of-web-automation-teaching-agents-to-77804246c56a markdown: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/video/the-dark-arts-of-web-automation-teaching-agents-to-77804246c56a.md llms: null parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md' channel: aidotengineer updated: '2026-10-24T05:24:21.849Z' language: null children: [] videoId: 26RtyAm9y_Q durationSeconds: 1298 publishedAt: '2026-08-14T15:30:00.000Z' searchChunks: - ordinal: 0 text: null startSeconds: 24 endSeconds: 110 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=24' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 1 text: null startSeconds: 121 endSeconds: 169 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=121' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 2 text: null startSeconds: 182 endSeconds: 252 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=182' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 3 text: null startSeconds: 182 endSeconds: 252 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=182' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 4 text: null startSeconds: 121 endSeconds: 169 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=121' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 5 text: null startSeconds: 262 endSeconds: 347 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=262' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 6 text: null startSeconds: 347 endSeconds: 358 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=347' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 7 text: null startSeconds: 415 endSeconds: 512 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=415' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 8 text: null startSeconds: 523 endSeconds: 649 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=523' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 9 text: null startSeconds: 523 endSeconds: 649 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=523' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 10 text: null startSeconds: 659 endSeconds: 771 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=659' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 11 text: null startSeconds: 659 endSeconds: 771 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=659' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 12 text: null startSeconds: 782 endSeconds: 873 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=782' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 13 text: null startSeconds: 873 endSeconds: 885 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=873' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 14 text: null startSeconds: 885 endSeconds: 1001 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=885' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 15 text: null startSeconds: 1013 endSeconds: 1189 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=1013' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 16 text: null startSeconds: 1013 endSeconds: 1189 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=1013' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 17 text: null startSeconds: 415 endSeconds: 512 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=415' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 18 text: null startSeconds: 24 endSeconds: 110 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/26RtyAm9y_Q?t=24' heldReason: rights --- # The Dark Arts of Web Automation: Teaching Agents to Use Websites Like Humans — Corey Gallon, Rexmore Preparing this talk got Corey Gallon a warning from OpenAI that his account faced a ban for cyber abuse with a web browser. The offending work was an agent clearing Cloudflare Turnstile, two image captchas, and finally reCAPTCHA v2 with no human in the loop. His premise fits on one slide: a browser driven through the Chrome DevTools Protocol is just a meat bag with a mouse, because the agent's clicks and keystrokes travel the same path inside Chrome that yours do. Chrome stamps every event as trusted or untrusted, which is why a synthetic JavaScript click that works fine in Outlook gets silently dropped by Amazon's add to cart button. The method is a loop of sense, act, verify, climbed up a three rung ladder only as high as the page forces. A synthetic click first, then a real CDP input event, then a human mouse path with jitter and a deliberate overshoot. He argues for a CLI over an MCP server on speed rather than capability, citing a study where both cleared tasks about 83% of the time while MCP took 71 round trips and eight minutes against seven turns and under a minute. That gap decides the last fight, because reCAPTCHA rounds expire on a clock. His solution splits the work: deterministic code drives the whole challenge and rearms itself, and the agent is called in only to look at the grid and name the tiles. Everything demonstrated runs on infrastructure and accounts he owns. Speaker info: - https://x.com/coreygallon - https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreygallon - https://gallon.me - https://github.com/captivus/chrome-agent Timestamps: 0:00 - Threatened with a ban for preparing this talk 1:50 - The premise: a CDP browser is a meat bag with a mouse 2:43 - Why a CLI beats an MCP server 4:06 - The DevTools Protocol and the agent's digital senses 5:47 - The loop: sense, act, verify 6:38 - The three rung ladder 8:27 - Rung one: batch emails, and the web UI as a permissionless API 10:44 - Rung two: trusted clicks and the add to cart button 12:51 - Rung three: Cloudflare Turnstile 14:26 - Image captchas, drag puzzles, and human motion 16:36 - Final boss: reCAPTCHA v2, solver and operator 19:47 - The methodology is the takeaway --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/26RtyAm9y_Q-the-dark-arts-of-web-automation-teaching-agents-to-use-websites-like-humans Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney --- Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/the-dark-arts-of-web-automation-teaching-agents-to-77804246c56a · Channel: [AI Engineer](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md) > Search chunk text is held until public-source provenance is verified. ## Document chunks > Missing: no stored document chunks are available.