Introduction
Clearcote is an open-source, de-Googled Chromium distribution with engine-level fingerprint controls — a drop-in for Playwright & Puppeteer.
Working with an AI agent?
Copy the entire Clearcote documentation as one prompt-ready block, then paste it into Claude, Codex, Cursor or any LLM so it has full project context instantly.
What it is
A stock browser quietly exposes a unique, trackable fingerprint — canvas, WebGL, audio, fonts, locale, hardware and more. Clearcote moves control of those signals into the engine itself, so a session presents one consistent, plausible identity instead of an accidentally hyper-unique one.
It is built on ungoogled-chromium (Google integration and telemetry removed) plus a transparent stack of source patches. There is no magic binary: you can read every change, rebuild it yourself, and check that what you run matches what is published.
Principles
| Principle | What it means |
|---|---|
| Open by default | 100% open source. Every patch is human-readable. No proprietary blobs in the tree. |
| Engine-level, not script injection | Controls are compiled into the binary, not bolted on via brittle, self-revealing injected JavaScript. |
| Coherent identity | Signals are controlled together so they stay internally consistent and stable per site. |
| Reproducible & verifiable | Pinned upstream revision, deterministic patch set, checksummed and signed artifacts. |
| Responsible by design | Built for privacy, testing and lawful automation. You are responsible for how you use it. |
Who it's for
Developers, QA and automation engineers, privacy researchers, and the agents/LLMs that increasingly drive them. If you already use Playwright or Puppeteer, migration is meant to be a one-line import change.
Clearcote is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from any commercial product, and it ships no third-party proprietary code.