2026-10-26 16:15 UTCOriginal source2 min readUpdated: 2026-10-27 00:54 UTC

webframe: evaluated as a scraper and a sandbox

Summary

Simon Willison had Claude Opus 5.5 test and evaluate webframe, a small Go project by Jeff Lindsay that runs a web page like a program by executing its JavaScript in a hidden system-backed web view. The verdict: it is a fast, lightweight runner suitable for scraping, with performance on par with shot-scraper, but it has notable rough edges including CSP failures, a 0x0 viewport, hanging loads, missing HTTP metadata, and limited browser controls.

SourceSimon Willison's Weblog

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Research: webframe: evaluated as a scraper and a sandbox

Simon Willison’s Weblog

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26th October 2026

Research

webframe: evaluated as a scraper and a sandbox — An evaluation of webframe found it to be a fast, lightweight browser-JavaScript runner suitable for scraping, with performance comparable to shot-scraper, but with important rough edges including CSP failures, a 0×0 viewport, hanging loads, missing HTTP metadata, and limited browser controls.

webframe is a neat little project from Jeff Lindsay which lets you "run a web page like a program" - you point it at a URL or file and it executes it in a hidden headless web view and outputs console.log() to standard output and any exceptions to standard error.

It's written in Go on top of the glaze library, which provides access to a system browser ("WKWebView on macOS, WebKitGTK on Linux, WebView2 on Windows") so it doesn't need to bundle its own browser engine.

It reminds me of my own shot-scraper javascript tool, albeit in a much smaller package that doesn't depend on Playwright.

I had Claude Opus 5.5 put it through its paces and prepare a research report for me. Here's the prompt I used:

Explore https://github.com/tractordev/webframe try running it and put it though its paces, build a few exploratory prototypes, then evaluate it as a potential sandboxing tool and as a tool for scraping web pages using the same patterns encouraged by the "shot-scraper JavaScript" command (see simonw/shot-scraper on GitHub, docs directory)

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Key points

webframe is written in Go on top of the glaze library, which uses the system browser (WKWebView, WebKitGTK, WebView2) instead of bundling an engine.
It pipes console.log() to stdout and exceptions to stderr, treating a URL or file like an executable program.
The evaluation found it fast and scraping-capable, comparable to shot-scraper, but hampered by CSP failures, a 0x0 viewport, hanging loads, missing HTTP metadata, and limited browser control.
Simon compares it to his own shot-scraper javascript tool, noting webframe's much smaller footprint and lack of a Playwright dependency.

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