Intermediate4 min read

Let an agent use a site with no API

Give an agent a real browser for supplier portals, registers and internal tools — and fence it to the sites you intend.

Plenty of the information real work depends on lives on websites that were never meant to be automated — a supplier portal, a planning register, a council site, an internal tool. The Browser tool lets an agent open one, click through it, fill a form and read what comes back.

Step 1: Assign the tool

Open your team, pick the agent that needs it, and add Browser from the tool library — the same way you would add web search or a PDF reader.

Step 2: Fence it to the sites you mean

Set allowed domains on the tool. An agent can then only reach those sites, and subdomains of them — so a supplier-portal agent can reach the portal and nothing else.

Warning:Set the allowlist. Without one the agent can open any public site it decides is relevant, which is rarely what you want from a tool that fills in forms.

Step 3: Say what to do, not how

Describe the task in the agent's instructions the way you would to a new colleague — which site, what to find, what to bring back. The agent works out the clicks.

Open the supplier portal, find the current framework agreement for
each shortlisted vendor, and report the expiry date and notice period.
If a vendor has no agreement listed, say so rather than inferring one.

When not to use it

For an ordinary page, Web Fetch is faster and cheaper. Reach for the browser only when what you need is behind a click, a form, or a script that has to run.

Note:Pages are fetched by your own Forge deployment, not by a third party. Anything behind a login the agent doesn't have is still out of reach — the browser doesn't carry your credentials.
Let an agent use a site with no API — Forge Guides — Forge