Reference

ab-connect is the browser extension that drives your real Chrome, talking to the CLI over native messaging. It has its own version numbers (0.5.x), separate from the CLI. chrome-use extension status shows which version is installed and which the store serves. Since 0.5.23 the extension asks Chrome to check for updates itself, so most users never update it by hand.

0.5.x

• 0.5.26 (September 10, 2026): Input.insertText's timeout now scales with the payload. For a command that costs time per character, a flat 8s budget is not a health check — it is a size limit in disguise: 34 KB into a rich-text editor measured ~15s and was cut off at 8s, which made keyboard inserttext --file useless at exactly the sizes it exists for. The budget is now 8s + 2ms/byte, capped at 120s — roughly 4× the measured worst case, so a healthy renderer never trips it, while the cap keeps a pathological payload from hanging a session forever. The timeout message is distinct too: a budget that already scaled with the payload and still ran out means the page is slower per byte than expected (a heavy editor, a busy tab), not that "the debugger stopped responding" — which sent callers looking for a hung page that isn't there (#301).
• 0.5.25 (2026-09-10): one generic door, ABExt.call — a CLI feature that only needs an allow-listed chrome.tabs / tabGroups / windows / downloads / webNavigation method no longer needs a new extension release. Mutating calls are allowed only on tabs the agent created (adopted tabs stay read-only, windows.create/remove are refused, and debugger / identity / storage / runtime / management are never reachable this way). New ABExt.state returns everything the extension holds, owns and is configured to in one call. Permissions unchanged, so the update installs without re-approval (#294).
• 0.5.24 (2026-09-09): tabs reports the tab the relay is actually attached to, not only the one the session requested, and speaks up when the two disagree — so a dropped relay tab no longer reads like a permissions bug (#279).
• 0.5.23 (2026-09-09): self-update — the extension asks Chrome to check the store instead of waiting for its own multi-hour schedule, and applies a downloaded update the moment no tab is attached. No new permission; an update that never finds a quiet moment is applied by Chrome when the worker stops (#272).
• 0.5.22 (2026-09-09): raised the trustworthiness of relay recovery, observations, and connection status.
• 0.5.21 (2026-09-08): tab-group naming for session name — name the session at the start of a task, before opening tabs (#236).
• 0.5.20 (2026-09-04): fixed a batch of upload, select, idle and relay regressions (#212).
• 0.5.19 (2026-09-02): fixed #201–#206 (idle detach, press/xpath, CJK read-back, click focus, cwd session, shadow-DOM snapshot).
• 0.5.18 (2026-08-30): converged relay, ref and macOS leak issues; an explicit open/navigate now recovers a renderer-scoped Page.navigate timeout through Chrome's browser-level tab API, keeping the same session and tab (#198).
• 0.5.17 (2026-08-24): store package, permission notes completed.
• 0.5.16 (2026-07-31): fixed recording, snapshot, find and frozen-tab issues; the tab inspect probe channel dates from here (#151 #154–#157).
• 0.5.14 – 0.5.15 (2026-07-28): fixed open-relay, dialog, status and site-adapter issues, plus release-review follow-ups.
• 0.5.13 (2026-07-24): native downloads and a versioned local HTTP API (#132).
• 0.5.12 (2026-07-16): agent tabs open in a dedicated window by default, plus a smarter default profile choice (#120).
• 0.5.10 (2026-07-06): traffic links in the popup footer; silenced the native-host lastError.
• 0.5.9 (2026-07-02): added identity / identity.email so the hello carries the profile's account email.
• 0.5.8 (2026-06-30): pierced the OAuth GSI sign-in iframe (OOPIF) and early-attached login popups.
• 0.5.7 (2026-06-29): reconnect the relay on wake-from-sleep via chrome.idle (#72).
• 0.5.6 (2026-06-29): stopped persisting adopted tabs, clearing a stuck "debugging this browser" banner (#71).
• 0.5.5 (2026-06-28): attach only the agent's own tabs — no debugger banner on user pages (#68).
• 0.5.4 (2026-06-27): stopped the reattach retry storm on permanently-unattachable tabs (#64).
• 0.5.3 (2026-06-26): the hello reports which Chrome profile the relay is driving (#60).
• 0.5.2 (2026-06-26): a proactive 20s heartbeat so the MV3 worker never idle-drops the relay (#59).
• 0.5.0 – 0.5.1 (2026-06-24): icon and UX overhaul (friendly icon, polished popup, options page, agent cursor); rounded transparent icon.

0.4.x and earlier (early history)

The 0.4 series is where the relay was made reliable: a stable per-tab session id, auto-reconnect after a cross-process detach, recovery of a churned-tabId session by its stable CDP targetId, loud failure on a stale sessionId instead of routing to a random tab, plus adopt for pre-existing tabs, group-scoped Target.getTargets, and default idle-shutdown with keep. Before that, 0.1.0 – 0.3.0 (2026-06-09) laid the foundation: the MV3 connect extension adapted from openclaw-browser-relay, the zero-token native-messaging transport, and force-install through a Chrome config profile (no Load-unpacked).