Automation (IPC)

qbrsh exposes a JSON-RPC control interface over a Unix domain socket, so any process can drive the browser. This is the supported path for heavy or untrusted automation, kept separate from in-process plugins.

The socket

When qbrsh starts it binds a socket at:

$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/qbrsh/ipc.sock

A stale socket left by a crashed instance is detected and replaced on the next launch.

Methods

Requests are newline-delimited JSON-RPC objects:

Method	Params	Effect
run_command	{ "command": "<string>" }	run a command, as if typed after :
open_url	{ "url": "<string>" }	open the URL in a new tab

Each request gets a one-line response, {"ok":true} or {"error":"..."}. Requests are delivered to the dispatch loop as messages and run on the main loop; the socket thread never touches browser state directly.

Examples

# Open a tab
printf '{"method":"open_url","params":{"url":"https://example.com"}}\n' \
  | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/qbrsh/ipc.sock

# Run any command
printf '{"method":"run_command","params":{"command":"tab-next"}}\n' \
  | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/qbrsh/ipc.sock

URL forwarding

Launching qbrsh <url> while an instance is already running forwards the URL to that instance over the same socket and exits, instead of starting a second browser. With no running instance, it starts normally and creates the socket.