We Put Chromium on a Unikernel (OSS Apache 2.0)
We’ve been building infrastructure to spin up browsers for AI agents. Originally, we built[0] it as a pool of warm Docker containers running Chromium, exposing: - Chrome DevTools Protocol (for Playwright/Puppeteer) - noVNC (for live view) We’ve been following the unikernel space for a while, so we decided to see if we could get our image on one. We went with Unikraft Cloud[1]. Here’s how it did: - Boot-up time: 10–20ms (vs. ~5s for Docker containers) - Near 0 CPU/memory consumption when idle - Still ~8GB RAM when active (headful Chromium) Potential use cases: - Standby mode during…
In plain words
This project runs Chromium on a unikernel to provide fast browser instances for AI agents. It exposes the Chrome DevTools Protocol for automation tools like Playwright and Puppeteer, plus noVNC for live viewing. Compared to Docker containers, unikernel instances boot in 10–20ms instead of 5 seconds and consume nearly zero resources when idle. It is designed for AI applications requiring rapid browser startup, long-lived sessions with persistent cookies, and minimal standby costs. The code is open source under Apache 2.0.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
We’ve been building infrastructure to spin up browsers for AI agents. Originally, we built[0] it as a pool of warm Docker containers running Chromium, exposing: - Chrome DevTools Protocol (for Playwright/Puppeteer) - noVNC (for live view) We’ve been following the unikernel space for a while, so we decided to see if we could get our image on one. We went with Unikraft Cloud[1]. Here’s how it did: - Boot-up time: 10–20ms (vs. ~5s for Docker containers) - Near 0 CPU/memory consumption when idle - Still ~8GB RAM when active (headful Chromium) Potential use cases: - Standby mode during long-running jobs: unikernels can sleep after X sec of inactivity, reducing clock time costs - Session reuse: auth/session cookies persist for hours/days. Basically as long as the cookies are valid - Cold start speed: good for low-latency, event-based handling We open sourced it with Apache 2.0! Feel free to fork or submit an issue / PR. Open to feedback or suggestions. www.github.com/onkernel/kernel-images == [0] https://github.com/onkernel/kernel-images [1] https://unikraft.cloud/ [2] Thanks to the Unikraft Cloud team @fhuici @nderjung @razvandeax for helping us figure this out (we're not affiliated) [3] (OPs) @rgarcia @juecd
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