--- layout: "article.njk" title: "WebMCP: How AI Agents Will Actually Use the Web" description: "WebMCP is a way for a website to tell an AI assistant what it can do. The page publishes a short list of tools it supports. Here is what it is, why it matters, how to try it, and what happens next." date: "2026-09-02" tags: [webmcp, mcp, ai-agents, browser-tools, model-context-protocol, devtools] featured: true permalink: "/articles/what-is-webmcp/" eleventyExcludeFromCollections: false published: true --- WebMCPs are here and it could be a game changer for how agents use websites. It is very much early days but could accelerate fairly quickly. Here's all you need to know as of today! --- ## What WebMCP is WebMCP is a way for a website to tell an AI assistant what it can do. The page publishes a short list of tools it supports. Each entry has a name, a plain description, and the details it needs — *"book a meeting, give me a time, a name and an email."* The assistant reads the list, picks one, and asks. Imagine walking into a restaurant to get some food. You are shown into the kitchen and storage and you've to ask what you want. That's roughly how agents deal with websites today. How about we hand it a menu instead?

WebMCP: Today vs WebMCP Menu Doodle

--- ## Why it matters An assistant has two ways to work a website today. Both are guesswork. It can read the page's HTML — the code behind what you see — and try to work out which part is the form. Which button submits it. What each field expects. Or it can take a screenshot and look at the page the way you would, then decide where to click. Either way it is inferring. A button marked *Book* might book. It might also open a second form, or start a subscription. Nothing on the page says which. So the assistant tries something, watches what happens, and tries again. WebMCP removes the guessing. The page publishes what it can do, in words, with the details each one needs. The assistant asks for the open times and gets a list back. --- ## How to try it I built four simple tools into my website that you can try: 1. **Learn about me** 2. **Search through the projects** 3. **Find a slot** 4. **Book a meeting** ### What you need before you try it out - **Option 1 — the ChatGPT desktop app**: The browser is already inside it, so there is nothing to install. You need a personal account, because this is switched off in work and school workspaces. And you need the right model: **GPT-5.6 Sol or Terra**. It does not work on Luna. - **Option 2 — Claude, Antigravity or opencode, plus your own Chrome**: These have no browser of their own, so they drive yours. You need **Chrome 149 to 156**, or **Edge 150**, with the feature switched on. --- ### Steps for Option 1 — ChatGPT 1. Open the **ChatGPT desktop app** (the installed app, not the website in a browser). 2. Use the prompt: > *"Can you tell me about Surendran's projects and find the earliest time for a meeting? Check out [surendranb.com](https://surendranb.com)"* --- ### Steps for Option 2 — Claude, Antigravity or opencode 1. In Chrome, open `chrome://flags/#enable-webmcp-testing` 2. Set it to **Enabled** and relaunch Chrome. 3. Ask: > *"Can you tell me about Surendran's projects and find the earliest time for a meeting? Check out [surendranb.com](https://surendranb.com) using Chrome Browser"* 4. If it doesn't call the tools, explicitly ask it to use the WebMCP tools advertised by the site. --- ## What happens next It is not a standard yet. It sits in a **W3C Community Group** — a place for working on proposals, not the track that produces web standards. - **Google & Microsoft are actively pursuing**: The trial runs from Chrome 149 to Chrome 156 and stops. At that point it either ships properly or it goes away. There is no third option and no extension. Edge runs its own trial from Edge 150, currently set to expire in November. - **Mozilla and Apple have said nothing**: Both have an open thread asking them to take a position. Neither has. Chrome's own filing records both as *"no signal"*, which is the polite term for silence. Nothing ships in Firefox or Safari until that changes. - **Cloudflare has made it easy to test**: Since August, any site sitting behind Cloudflare can add WebMCP from a dashboard toggle. It is a developer preview and it is off unless you switch it on. So adoption could jump rather than climb. Google's site-quality checker already looks for published tools. Today it is only a note. Notes become warnings, warnings reach roadmaps, and the sites behind Cloudflare are one switch away when it does. --- ## Read more - [OpenAI's guide to WebMCP in ChatGPT, including what its browser does and does not support](https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/webmcp) - [Chrome's WebMCP docs](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/webmcp) - [Writing tools that cannot be hijacked](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/webmcp/secure-tools) — Chrome's security guidance, worth reading before you expose anything that matters - [The proposal itself](https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webmcp) — arguments and all, in public - [What it says about security](https://webmachinelearning.github.io/webmcp/#security-privacy) — including the line about not being able to define mitigations - [Which browsers have shipped what](https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webmcp/blob/main/implementation-status.md) — the current state, kept up to date by the editors, including Edge's own trial - [Chrome's filing to ship the trial](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/gmYffo5WOE8/m/OJxuQRP3AAAJ) — where the 149-to-156 window is set, and where Mozilla and Apple are both recorded as "no signal" - [Mozilla's position](https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1412) and [Apple's](https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/670) — both still open, neither answered - [Cloudflare's switch](https://blog.cloudflare.com/webmcp/) — the toggle that adds this to any site behind them - [Google's agentic browsing checks](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/agentic-browsing/scoring) — the audit that will eventually put this on your roadmap