A Fresh Browser Is Part of the Capture Input
Why executable identity, owned profiles, and control transport belong in acquisition evidence.
Scope: Engineering or methodology note based on a September 17, 2026 snapshot. Source-level behavior is not a public availability or universal compatibility claim. Any scenarios are illustrative, not customer outcomes.
A browser session carries more than a URL. Its executable, profile, context, and control channel affect what can be observed and how the operation can be owned.
KodeCapture’s current source resolves the browser through its pinned Playwright installation, requires the expected executable, and creates fresh owned operation and profile roots. It does not silently substitute an arbitrary system Chrome when the required browser is unavailable.
Avoid inheriting an unexplained session
A personal browser profile can contain state that the acquisition request did not declare. Using it casually would make the capture harder to interpret: did the page behave that way because of the application, a stored session, or an extension in the operator’s browser?
Fresh owned contexts do not solve every browser-state problem, but they establish a clearer starting point. The root and each journey receive the intended context under the product’s supported composition.
Keep control transport separate from behavior authority
On the current macOS capture path, Chromium control uses private pipes rather than an exposed browser debugging port. That is a control-channel choice. It does not, by itself, prove initialization, application effects, or complete observation coverage.
The distinction matters because a strong-sounding transport detail can easily become an exaggerated security or correctness claim. The private channel is one part of ownership; the actual acquisition still needs validated intent, measured environment conditions, and supported evidence.
Refuse a different experiment
If the expected executable is unavailable, the current path fails before browser spawn or capture publication. That refusal is preferable to running a different browser and reporting the result under the original assumptions.
This article describes the source-level acquisition boundary, not support for every browser or host. Kalu currently supports macOS, and KodeCapture’s installed-product qualification remains a separate milestone.
For an evaluator, ask which browser actually ran and which state it inherited. “We opened the page” is not a complete acquisition description. A fresh, owned browser does not make the observation universal, but it makes the observation’s starting conditions much easier to explain and reproduce.