Moli by Lexmount: The fastest headless browser for agents and harnesses

Moli is a standalone Rust engine that runs JavaScript on V8 and computes styles itself, rather than being a Chromium wrapper. Most agent requests only need page structure, so DOM queries, script evaluation, and HTML or Markdown extraction read from native state without running layout or paint. The engine can be driven through a CLI or through CDP, WebDriver Classic and WebDriver BiDi. Lexmount's cloud service lets users choose Chromium or Moli based on the task's compatibility, visual fidelity, and resource needs. The company says Moli already runs real production workloads, and it has roughly 20.8k GitHub stars. Lexmount's own LexBench tests report higher compatibility with a smaller footprint, but the readme offers no throughput, latency or memory figure at all, so the speed claim is not yet backed by published numbers. For an AI team, the practical question is which browser a workflow needs. Moli fits structure-first jobs such as extraction and form filling, while Chromium suits visual or compatibility-sensitive flows. The project does not aim for pixel-for-pixel parity with Chrome, so test target sites before routing production traffic through it.