browse.exe fails on Windows: --remote-debugging-pipe not working with Bun runtime

[Zoesin]

Environment

• OS: Windows 11 Home (10.0.26200)
• Bun: v1.3.8
• Node.js: v22.21.0
• Playwright: v1.58.2
• gstack: latest (shallow clone 2026-03-21)

Problem

browse.exe (compiled with Bun) cannot launch Chromium on Windows. Chrome starts
successfully (pid is assigned) but the --remote-debugging-pipe connection times out
after 180000ms, so Playwright never gets a usable browser instance.

Affects all browser-dependent skills: /browse, /qa, /qa-only, /design-review,
/setup-browser-cookies.

Reproduction

cd ~/.claude/skills/gstack
bun --eval 'import { chromium } from "playwright"; const browser = await chromium.launch(); console.log("OK"); await
browser.close();'

Result:
TimeoutError: launch: Timeout 180000ms exceeded.
  - <launching> ...chrome-headless-shell.exe ... --remote-debugging-pipe --no-startup-window
  - <launched> pid=29348

Chrome launches but never connects back through the pipe.

Root Cause

Bun on Windows does not correctly inherit/pass the anonymous pipe file handles (fd 3 & 4)
to the Chrome child process when using --remote-debugging-pipe. This is a known Bun
limitation on Windows.

Workaround

Node.js works perfectly:

const { chromium } = require('./node_modules/playwright');
const browser = await chromium.launch({ timeout: 10000 });
console.log('OK'); // ✅ succeeds immediately
await browser.close();

Suggestion

- Build/distribute a Node.js version of browse for Windows, or
- Detect the Bun pipe issue at startup and fall back to Node.js if available, or
- Document this limitation in Windows installation notes

[garrytan]

Fixed in #255 (v0.9.3.0). The browse server now automatically falls back to Node.js on Windows to work around Bun's pipe-handling bug. Just make sure Node.js is installed alongside Bun. Big thanks to @sozairali for the fix!