---
title: "Live view and profiles"
description: "Watching a session's page live, and an address of it for people who may only look; a session's profile, its cookies and storage, kept by the platform for the project and loaded into new sessions. Not open to accounts yet."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://glac.ai/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Live view and profiles

**Not open yet.** Browser is not open to accounts yet. This page says how it works as it is built, ahead of its opening, and may change before then.

## Watching a session live

A session's `live_url` is where its page is watched and driven, live, in any browser: a signed address, as its CDP address is, and a credential as that one is.

- **A headless session** (`chromium-headless`): a page that draws the browser's most recent tab as it changes, with a list to switch tabs; the viewer's mouse, wheel, keyboard and pastes reach the page.
- **A headful session** (`chromium`): its screen, through noVNC, mouse and keyboard and all.
- **A Lightpanda session** (`lightpanda`) has none: it has no layout engine and nothing to stream. Its `live_url` is null, and `GET /v1/browsers/{id}/live` is refused (400 `kind_unsupported`). It keeps no profile either: a create with one, and a save, are refused the same way. See [Lightpanda](/docs/browser/#lightpanda).

`GET /v1/browsers/{id}/live?interactive=false` gives an address where the page is only looked at: an address of its own, whose signature opens nothing else, where nothing but what draws the screen reaches the browser. Keys, clicks, pastes, resizes, scripts and navigation do not. Put it in a page of your own for people to watch an agent at work. Without `interactive=false` the call gives `live_url`.

```http
GET /v1/browsers/agent-42/live?interactive=false
```

```json
{"object": "browser_live", "id": "sbx-…", "url": "https://6081-…/live?interactive=false", "interactive": false}
```

A viewer connected keeps the session awake, as a CDP client does. Both addresses are a new pair after `rotate-url`, which ends the viewers' connections with the rest. Reading either takes the key's `url` scope: `live_url` is `null` without it. Where the session's machine gives no address now, the call answers 503 `unavailable`, `retryable`.

## Profiles

A profile is what says who a browser is to the sites it visited: its cookies, Local Storage, IndexedDB, Session Storage and preferences, without its cache. Log in once in a session, save its profile, and every session made with the profile is logged in.

- **Make a session with one**: `profile: {"name": "acme-login"}` in the create. Its newest version (or the one `version` names) is loaded before the session is answered: the browser is started again on it. With `save: true`, the session saves it again when it is deleted (unless the delete says `?save_profile=false`); a profile that has no version yet is made by that save. A profile with no version that the session does not save is refused (404 `profile_not_found`).
- **Save one now**: `POST /v1/browsers/{id}/profile` with `{"name"}`, or with nothing for the profile the session was made with. Its browser is stopped as it is closed, so that it writes what it holds, packed, and started again: a client connected is disconnected, and connects again. The answer is the profile, the new version first among its versions.
- **One save of a profile at a time**: another, from any session, is refused 409 `profile_busy` (`retryable`). Two sessions may load one profile; each save is a version of its own, and the newest is the profile's.
- `GET /v1/browsers/profiles` lists the project's profiles by name, `GET /v1/browsers/profiles/{name}` gives one with every version (its `bytes`, `sha256`, when it was saved and by which session), and `DELETE /v1/browsers/profiles/{name}` deletes one: gone at once, and its archives deleted 30 days later. A profile saved again under the name is a new one. A profile's name is 1 to 63 lower-case letters, digits and hyphens, a letter or a digit first and last; no session is named `profiles`.

Where a profile could not be loaded or saved (the object store not reached, the browser not come back), the call is 503 `profile_transfer_failed`, `retryable`: a session made for a profile it could not load is deleted again, and one whose save failed is left as it was.

**Where profiles are kept.** In a bucket the platform keeps for the project behind its own object gateway, `glac-profiles-<project>`, made with the first save and not billed on its own. The platform reads and writes it with a key of its own for the project, which reaches that bucket alone. A session never holds a key: for each load or save it is given the address of one object, good for two minutes. A control plane with no object gateway keeps no profiles (400 `objects_not_served`). A profile's cookies are sealed with a key that is the same in every session, so another session reads them: treat a profile as the login it holds.

The command line has `glac browsers live`, `save-profile`, `profiles ls` and `profiles rm`, and `create --profile`; the Python and TypeScript SDKs have the same. The Go, Rust and Java SDKs and the MCP server have neither live view nor profiles yet: the MCP server's `browser_open` gives `live_url`.

Source: https://glac.ai/docs/browser/live-and-profiles/index.mdx