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Rollback Steel to Camoufox

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tagsdecision, browser, steel, camofox, rollback

2 min read

Decision: Rollback Steel Browser → Camoufox

Date

2026-07-30

Context

Steel Browser was deployed on CT201 on 2026-07-29 as the primary browser automation backend, replacing Camoufox. It ran for approximately 24 hours before being reverted.

Options Considered

OptionProsCons
Keep SteelFull CDP access, session viewer UI, Docker isolationCDP URL normalization issues, network hop, empty-stream errors
Revert to CamoufoxLocal (no network hop), already authenticated, fewer failure modesHeaded display consumes resources, no built-in session viewer
Both (Steel primary, Camoufox fallback)RedundancyComplexity, two backends to maintain, unclear which one Hermes uses per-request

Decision

Revert to Camoufox as primary. Steel plugin disabled but left running on CT201.

Rationale

  1. Reliability: Camoufox runs on the same host as Hermes (CT450) — no Docker networking, no CDP URL normalization patches, no container-to-host routing issues.
  2. Auth persistence: Camoufox’s persistent profile anthony is already authenticated into key services (Uber Eats, LinkedIn). Steel required cookie re-exports.
  3. Failure mode: The opencode-go/deepseek-v4-flash empty-stream errors were hitting all providers, but Steel added an extra failure surface (CDP connection, plugin layer) on top of the same problem.
  4. DeepSeek 0731 compatibility: The new model’s stricter tool name validation (^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+$) affected all providers — not a Steel-specific issue, but another reason to minimise the toolchain.

Consequences

  • Positive: Browser automation is stable again. Uber Eats report ran successfully via Camofox on 2026-08-01.
  • Negative: Steel’s session viewer UI and full CDP access are no longer available to Hermes.
  • Neutral: Steel still runs on CT201 — can be re-enabled by uncommenting .env lines and enabling the plugin.

Evidence

  • Camoufox verified working Jul 30: browserConnected: true, sessions: 1, tabs: 1, active 200s
  • Uber Eats report (Aug 1) successfully scraped via Camofox REST API — 11 orders, $264.51
  • Steel plugin browser-steel still present at /home/hermes/.hermes/plugins/browser-steel/ — disabled

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