Zen is my daily browser and I kept missing Claude in Chrome, so I built zenpilot. It lets Claude Desktop or Claude Code use Zen: open and switch tabs, read pages, click, type, scroll, take screenshots. The video is Claude filling in and submitting a test form.
No extension. It starts Zen with its built-in remote control on and talks to it over localhost.
The privacy side:
- Claude only works on sites you allow, so you decide which pages it reads (and sends to Claude). The "allow this site?" popups go to you, not to Claude, and Enter always picks the safe option.
- It can't touch cookies, passwords or downloads.
- Setup offers a separate logged-out profile, so your accounts stay out of it.
- Remote control normally switches off Safe Browsing and the popup blocker in your profile. zenpilot stops that.
- Downside: while remote control is on, other local apps could connect to it too. Quit Zen and reopen it normally when done.
The catch: it's alpha and macOS-only (tested on Zen 1.23). Lots of you are on Linux/Windows, and Linux is probably the easier port. Before I start:
- Would you actually use this on Linux or Windows?
- How did you install Zen (Flatpak, AppImage, tarball, AUR, winget...)? That decides where it looks for Zen and your profiles.
Mac users can try it now: the `.mcpb` from releases for Claude Desktop, or `uv tool install zenpilot && zenpilot setup` for Claude Code.
https://github.com/beSaif/zenpilot