Skip to main content
Prompting can drastically improve performance and solve existing limitations of the library.

​
1. Be Specific vs Open-Ended

✅ Specific (Recommended) 
task = """
1. Go to https://quotes.toscrape.com/
2. Use extract action with the query "first 3 quotes with their authors"
3. Save results to quotes.csv using write_file action
4. Do a google search for the first quote and find when it was written
"""
❌ Open-Ended 
task = "Go to web and make money"

​
2. Name Actions Directly

When you know exactly what the agent should do, reference actions by name: 
task = """
1. Use search action to find "Python tutorials"
2. Use click to open first result in a new tab
3. Use scroll action to scroll down 2 pages
4. Use extract to extract the names of the first 5 items
5. Wait for 2 seconds if the page is not loaded, refresh it and wait 10 sec
6. Use send_keys action with "Tab Tab ArrowDown Enter"
"""
See Available Tools for the complete list of actions.

​
3. Handle interaction problems via keyboard navigation

Sometimes buttons cannot be clicked (you may have found a bug in the library - open an issue). In many cases, you can work around this with keyboard navigation. 
task = """
If the submit button cannot be clicked:
1. Use send_keys action with "Tab Tab Enter" to navigate and activate
2. Or use send_keys with "ArrowDown ArrowDown Enter" for form submission
"""

​
4. Custom Actions Integration

# When you have custom actions
@controller.action("Get 2FA code from authenticator app")
async def get_2fa_code():
    # Your implementation
    pass

task = """
Login with 2FA:
1. Enter username/password
2. When prompted for 2FA, use get_2fa_code action
3. NEVER try to extract 2FA codes from the page manually
4. ALWAYS use the get_2fa_code action for authentication codes
"""

​
5. Error Recovery

task = """
Robust data extraction:
1. Go to openai.com to find their CEO
2. If navigation fails due to anti-bot protection:
   - Use google search to find the CEO
3. If page times out, use go_back and try alternative approach
"""
The key to effective prompting is being specific about actions.