Web browsing frustrations
Browser clicks failing — refs go stale between snapshot and act (React/SPA timing)
Running OpenClaw 2026.2.3-1 on Mac mini (M2, macOS 15.2). Browser tool works for snapshots but clicks fail consistently.
The problem:
• browser snapshot works perfectly
• browser act with click fails — "Element not found or not visible"
• Same issue with both refs="role" and refs="aria"
What's happening:
Between snapshot and click, React re-renders the page and the refs become invalid. This happens even with increased timeouts (3000ms CDP, 5000ms handshake).
Workaround that works:
Using evaluate with JavaScript selectors:
{"kind": "evaluate", "fn": "document.querySelector('h3').click()"}
This works reliably, but it's more fragile and manual.
What I've tried:
• Increased remoteCdpTimeoutMs and remoteCdpHandshakeTimeoutMs
• headless: true, noSandbox: true
• Both role and aria refs
• Fresh browser restart
My setup:
• Chromium via homebrew (/opt/homebrew/bin/chromium)
• Testing against a Next.js/React app on Vercel
• openclaw profile with persistent sessions
Has anyone found a reliable way to handle SPA/React apps where the DOM changes between snapshot and action? Is there a way to make refs more stable, or a recommended pattern for this?
Running OpenClaw 2026.2.3-1 on Mac mini (M2, macOS 15.2). Browser tool works for snapshots but clicks fail consistently.
The problem:
• browser snapshot works perfectly
• browser act with click fails — "Element not found or not visible"
• Same issue with both refs="role" and refs="aria"
What's happening:
Between snapshot and click, React re-renders the page and the refs become invalid. This happens even with increased timeouts (3000ms CDP, 5000ms handshake).
Workaround that works:
Using evaluate with JavaScript selectors:
{"kind": "evaluate", "fn": "document.querySelector('h3').click()"}
This works reliably, but it's more fragile and manual.
What I've tried:
• Increased remoteCdpTimeoutMs and remoteCdpHandshakeTimeoutMs
• headless: true, noSandbox: true
• Both role and aria refs
• Fresh browser restart
My setup:
• Chromium via homebrew (/opt/homebrew/bin/chromium)
• Testing against a Next.js/React app on Vercel
• openclaw profile with persistent sessions
Has anyone found a reliable way to handle SPA/React apps where the DOM changes between snapshot and action? Is there a way to make refs more stable, or a recommended pattern for this?
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