CONTRIBUTING.md

Setting up the environment

With uv

We use uv to manage dependencies because it will automatically provision a Python environment with the expected Python version. To set it up, run:

$ ./scripts/bootstrap

Or install uv manually and run:

$ uv sync --all-extras

You can then run scripts using uv run python script.py:

uv run python script.py

Modifying/Adding code

Most of the SDK is generated code. Modifications to code will be persisted between generations, but may result in merge conflicts between manual patches and changes from the generator. The generator will never modify the contents of the src/stagehand/lib/ and examples/ directories.

Setting up the local server binary (for development)

The SDK supports running a local Stagehand server for development and testing. To use this feature, you need to download the appropriate binary for your platform.

Quick setup

Run the download script to automatically download the correct binary:

$ uv run python scripts/download-binary.py

This will:

• Detect your platform (macOS, Linux, Windows) and architecture (x64, arm64)
• Download the latest stagehand-server binary from GitHub releases
• Place it in bin/sea/ where the SDK expects to find it

Manual download (alternative)

You can also manually download from GitHub releases:

1. Find the latest stagehand/server vX.X.X release
2. Download the binary for your platform:
   • macOS ARM: stagehand-server-darwin-arm64
   • macOS Intel: stagehand-server-darwin-x64
   • Linux: stagehand-server-linux-x64 or stagehand-server-linux-arm64
   • Windows: stagehand-server-win32-x64.exe or stagehand-server-win32-arm64.exe
3. Rename it to match the expected format (remove -server from the name):
   • stagehand-darwin-arm64, stagehand-linux-x64, stagehand-win32-x64.exe, etc.
4. Place it in bin/sea/ directory
5. Make it executable (Unix only): chmod +x bin/sea/stagehand-*

Using an environment variable (optional)

Instead of placing the binary in bin/sea/, you can point to any binary location:

$ export STAGEHAND_SEA_BINARY=/path/to/your/stagehand-binary
$ uv run python test_local_mode.py

Adding and running examples

All files in the examples/ directory are not modified by the generator and can be freely edited or added to.

# add an example to examples/<your-example>.py

#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run python
…

$ chmod +x examples/<your-example>.py
# run the example against your api
$ ./examples/<your-example>.py

Using the repository from source

If you’d like to use the repository from source, you can either install from git or link to a cloned repository:

To install via git:

$ uv run pip install git+ssh://git@github.com/browserbase/stagehand-python.git

Alternatively, you can build from source and install the wheel file:

Building this package will create two files in the dist/ directory, a .tar.gz containing the source files and a .whl that can be used to install the package efficiently.

To create a distributable version of the library, all you have to do is run this command:

$ uv build
# or
$ uv run python -m build

Then to install:

uv run pip install ./path-to-wheel-file.whl

Running tests

$ uv run -- ./scripts/test

Linting and formatting

This repository uses ruff and black to format the code in the repository.

To lint:

$ uv run -- ./scripts/lint

To format and fix all ruff issues automatically:

$ uv run -- ./scripts/format

Publishing and releases

Changes made to this repository via the automated release PR pipeline should publish to PyPI automatically. If the changes aren't made through the automated pipeline, you may want to make releases manually.

Publish with a GitHub workflow

You can release to package managers by using the Publish PyPI GitHub action. This requires a setup organization or repository secret to be set up.

Publish manually

If you need to manually release a package, you can run the bin/publish-pypi script with a PYPI_TOKEN set on the environment.