Vibium 26.3

Three changes in this release — all focused on making the API cleaner and more consistent.

Unified Browser API: start() / stop()

browser.launch(), browser.connect(), and browser.close() are gone. Replaced by two methods: start() and stop().

Before:

:::javascript
const bro = await browser.launch()        // local browser
const bro = await browser.connect('ws://...') // remote browser
await bro.close()

After:

:::javascript
const bro = await browser.start()              // local browser
const bro = await browser.start('ws://...')    // remote browser
await bro.stop()

start() handles both local and remote — pass a WebSocket URL to connect to a remote browser, or call it with no arguments to launch a local one. stop() replaces close() / quit().

Same change across all targets:

:::python
# Python
bro = await browser.start()
bro = await browser.start("ws://remote:9222")
await bro.stop()

:::bash
# CLI
vibium start                          # local
vibium start --connect ws://remote:9222  # remote
vibium stop

"Tracing" is now "Recording"

All user-facing references to "tracing" have been renamed to "recording". The old names were borrowed from Playwright internals — "recording" is what the feature actually does.

• ctx.tracing → ctx.recording
• trace-start / trace-stop CLI commands → record-start / record-stop
• MCP tools: browser_trace_start / browser_trace_stop → browser_record_start / browser_record_stop

The internal zip format is unchanged — recordings are still compatible with Playwright's trace viewer.

:::javascript
// Before
await ctx.tracing.start({ screenshots: true })
const zip = await ctx.tracing.stop({ path: 'trace.zip' })

// After
await ctx.recording.start({ screenshots: true })
const zip = await ctx.recording.stop({ path: 'recording.zip' })

Record Player: player.vibium.dev

The Trace Viewer is now the Record Player, hosted at player.vibium.dev.

Open any .zip recording to get a full timeline with screenshots, DOM snapshots, network waterfall, and action markers. Also still compatible with trace.playwright.dev.

Other Changes

• Auto-scroll elements into view when found via CSS or semantic selectors
• Capture after-snapshots for click-like actions in recordings
• Record element bounding box in recording entries
• Lower default recording screenshot quality from 0.8 to 0.5 (smaller files)
• Fix route.fulfill() deadlock caused by dispatch mutex serialization
• Fix semantic element resolution in state queries
• Fix race condition in sync bridge callback signaling
• Fix remote browser BiDi session creation
• Flatten Chrome for Testing install layout for standalone chromedriver

Full Changelog: https://github.com/VibiumDev/vibium/compare/v26.2.28...v26.3.9