Re:WebMCP is available for early preview
by arjunchint on Sunday March 01, 2026 @06:29PM
(#47211951)
So... an API?
Most sites don't want to expose APIs or care enough about setup and maintenance of said API.
Are you asking if Agents should use API?
Hard agree that server-side MCP is the more interesting direction. Browser automation through MCP is a nice demo but its solving a problem most teams dont actually have.
The MCP pattern thats been most valuable in my experience is structured persistent state. I use ctlsurf for this -- agents read and write typed blocks through MCP. Datastores with queryable rows, key-value state, append-only logs. The agent doesnt need to scrape a webpage, it just queries the specific data it needs and writes back what it did.
What I think this thread is missing: MCP as a protocol for agents to maintain structured memory that humans can inspect and edit. Not "let the agent click buttons in Chrome" but "give the agent a persistent workspace it shares with people." Thats where MCP stops being a novelty and starts being infrastructure.
Sites that don’t want it will keep blocking. WebMCP doesn’t change that.
Your point about selenium is absolutely right. WebMCP is an unnecessary standard. Same developer effort as server-side MCP but routed through the browser, creating a copy that drifts from the actual UI. For the long tail that won’t build any agent interface, the browser should just get smarter at reading what’s already there.
Wrote about it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/manveerc/p/webmcp-false-econom...