REPL

The wavexis repl command launches an interactive shell for live browser sessions. It opens a non-headless browser and lets you execute commands in real time — navigate, click, type, take screenshots, evaluate JavaScript, and inspect page state without writing scripts.

When to use the REPL

The REPL is designed for interactive exploration and debugging. Use it when you need to:

• Explore a page before writing a multi-action config — test selectors, check element visibility, verify JavaScript expressions.
• Debug automation flows — step through actions one at a time and observe the browser visually.
• Inspect page state — check cookies, URL, title, or evaluate arbitrary JavaScript on the current page.
• Prototype sequences — try click → type → screenshot interactively, then encode the working sequence into a YAML config.

Launching

wavexis repl

This opens a Chrome window (non-headless) and starts the interactive prompt:

wavexis REPL — type 'help' for commands, 'exit' to quit
wavexis>

Commands

The REPL supports 16 commands, each mapping to a backend operation:

Command	Syntax	Description
navigate	navigate <url>	Navigate to a URL
screenshot	screenshot [filename]	Take a screenshot, save to file or screenshot.png
eval	eval <expression>	Evaluate a JavaScript expression
click	click <selector>	Click an element by CSS selector
type	type <selector> <text>	Type text into an input element
fill	fill <selector> <text>	Fill an input element (replaces content)
hover	hover <selector>	Hover over an element
key	key <key>	Press a keyboard key (e.g. Enter, Tab)
cookies	cookies	Get all cookies for the current page
url	url	Print the current page URL
title	title	Print the current page title
wait	wait <seconds>	Wait for a specified duration
back	back	Navigate back in browser history
forward	forward	Navigate forward in browser history
reload	reload	Reload the current page
help	help	Show available commands
exit	exit or quit	Exit the REPL

Examples

Basic navigation and inspection

wavexis> navigate https://example.com
wavexis> title
Example Domain
wavexis> url
https://example.com/
wavexis> eval document.querySelector('h1').textContent
Example Domain

Form interaction

wavexis> navigate https://example.com/login
wavexis> type #username admin@example.com
wavexis> type #password secret123
wavexis> click #login-button
wavexis> wait 2
wavexis> title
Dashboard - Example App
wavexis> screenshot dashboard.png

Cookie inspection

wavexis> navigate https://example.com
wavexis> cookies
[{"name": "session", "value": "abc123", "domain": ".example.com", ...}]

Keyboard input

wavexis> navigate https://example.com/search
wavexis> type #search-input hello world
wavexis> key Enter
wavexis> wait 1
wavexis> screenshot results.png

How it works

The REPL uses an async event loop that:

1. Launches a non-headless browser via the configured backend (CDP or BiDi).
2. Reads input from stdin, parses it with shlex.split for proper quoting.
3. Dispatches the command to the corresponding backend method.
4. Prints the result (or saves to file for screenshots).
5. Loops until exit/quit or EOF.

The browser stays open for the duration of the session, so you can chain commands without re-launching. This makes the REPL significantly faster than running individual CLI commands for exploratory work.

Tips

• Selectors — Use CSS selectors (e.g. #id, .class, tag). Quote selectors with special characters: click "button[data-action='submit']".
• Multi-word text — The type and fill commands accept text with spaces. The REPL uses shlex.split so you can quote: type #input "hello world".
• Screenshots — Without a filename, screenshots are saved to screenshot.png. Provide a path to customize: screenshot /tmp/page.png.
• Backend selection — Use --backend bidi to launch the REPL with the BiDi backend: wavexis --backend bidi repl.