We’ll be using the Browserbase SDK for our browser. Running Stagehand without Browserbase is very difficult, since it requires a browser instance to be running.

Check out the Stagehand Next.js Quickstart

Clone our GitHub repo to get started with Stagehand in Next.js.

​
Add Stagehand to an existing Next.js project

If you’d like to add Stagehand to an existing Next.js project, you can do so by installing the dependencies:

npm install @browserbasehq/stagehand @browserbasehq/sdk playwright zod

​
Write a server action

Next, let’s define our main function as a server action in app/stagehand/main.ts. This file will have the following three functions:

  1. main: Run the main Stagehand script
  2. runStagehand: Initialize and run the main function
  3. startBBSSession: Start a Browserbase session
app/stagehand/main.ts
// 🤘 Welcome to Stagehand!
// This file is from the [Stagehand docs](https://docs.stagehand.dev/sections/examples/nextjs).

"use server";

import { Stagehand } from "@browserbasehq/stagehand";
import { z } from "zod";
import { Browserbase } from "@browserbasehq/sdk";

/**
 * Run the main Stagehand script
 */
async function main(stagehand: Stagehand) {
  // You can use the `page` instance to write any Playwright code
  // For more info: https://playwright.dev/docs/pom
  const page = stagehand.page;

  // In this example, we'll get the title of the Stagehand quickstart page
  await page.goto("https://docs.stagehand.dev/");
  await page.act("click the quickstart link");
  const { title } = await page.extract({
    instruction: "extract the main heading of the page",
    schema: z.object({
      title: z.string(),
    }),
  });

  return title;
}

/**
 * Initialize and run the main() function
 */
export async function runStagehand(sessionId?: string) {
  const stagehand = new Stagehand({
    env: "BROWSERBASE",
    apiKey: process.env.BROWSERBASE_API_KEY,
    projectId: process.env.BROWSERBASE_PROJECT_ID,
    verbose: 1,
    logger: console.log,
    browserbaseSessionID: sessionId,
    disablePino: true,
  });
  await stagehand.init();
  await main(stagehand);
  await stagehand.close();
}

/**
 * Start a Browserbase session
 */
export async function startBBSSession() {
  const browserbase = new Browserbase();
  const session = await browserbase.sessions.create({
    projectId: process.env.BROWSERBASE_PROJECT_ID!,
  });
  const debugUrl = await browserbase.sessions.debug(session.id);
  return {
    sessionId: session.id,
    debugUrl: debugUrl.debuggerFullscreenUrl,
  };
}

​
Create a client component

Next, let’s create a client component that will start a Browserbase session and run the main function with the server actions we just defined. We’ll first create a Browserbase session and embed the session in an iframe before running the main function.

app/components/stagehandEmbed.tsx
"use client";

import { useCallback, useState } from "react";
import { runStagehand, startBBSSession } from "@/app/stagehand/main";

export function StagehandEmbed() {
  const [sessionId, setSessionId] = useState<string | null>(null);
  const [debugUrl, setDebugUrl] = useState<string | null>(null);

  const startSession = useCallback(async () => {
    const { sessionId, debugUrl } = await startBBSSession();
    setSessionId(sessionId);
    setDebugUrl(debugUrl);
    await runStagehand(sessionId);
  }, []);

  return (
    <div>
      {!sessionId && <button onClick={startSession}>Start Session</button>}
      {sessionId && debugUrl && (
        <iframe src={debugUrl} className="w-full h-full" />
      )}
    </div>
  );
}

​
Use the StagehandEmbed component

Now, we can use the StagehandEmbed component in our app.

app/page.tsx
import { StagehandEmbed } from "@/app/components/stagehandEmbed";

export default function Home() {
	return (
		<main>
			<StagehandEmbed />
		</main>
	)
}