nova-act

What it is and what it does

Nova Act is a Python SDK that lets you define and run AI agents to automate repetitive browser-based workflows. You describe a task in natural language (e.g., "book a flight from Boston to New York"), and the agent navigates the web, fills forms, clicks buttons, and extracts data on your behalf. It supports three modes: script mode for one-off automation, interactive mode for debugging in a Python REPL, and async mode for parallel workflows.

The SDK integrates with AWS services—you can authenticate via API key for the web playground or IAM credentials for production deployment. It handles common challenges like captchas, file uploads, sensitive data entry, and browser dialogs. You can persist sessions, record videos, store results in S3, and integrate with external tools via API calls or agentic frameworks like Strands Agents. Under the hood it uses Playwright for browser control and depends on boto3, pydantic, and tenacity for AWS integration and resilience.

Use it for:

• Automate repetitive data entry and form submission workflows across multiple websites without manual intervention.
• Extract structured information from web pages (prices, availability, contact details) and combine results from multiple sources.
• Test web applications by scripting complex user journeys and validating UI behavior programmatically.
• Run parallel browser sessions to scale up task completion (e.g., searching apartments and calculating commute times simultaneously).
• Integrate browser automation into larger agentic systems via tool calls or remote MCP for multi-step business processes.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

A Python SDK for building and running AI agents that automate browser-based UI workflows using natural language prompts, with support for parallel sessions, tool integration, and AWS deployment.

Yes—if you need to automate browser workflows at scale. The SDK is actively maintained, has low install friction, and offers both playground and production-ready deployment paths. Requires Python 3.10+, and the first run involves a one-time Playwright setup. No known vulnerabilities. Best suited for teams building AI agents or automating UI-heavy tasks; less relevant if you only need simple web scraping or don't have AWS infrastructure.

Install

nova-act on PyPI

pip install nova-act

uv add nova-act

poetry add nova-act

Installing nova-act

Before you install

Low friction installation with a pure Python wheel. Active maintenance as of 106 days ago. Requires Python 3.10 or above and Playwright browser installation (first run takes 1-2 minutes; subsequent runs are fast). Note: versions older than 3.0 are no longer supported—users must upgrade for security updates.

License in practice

Apache-2.0 permissive license allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions, typical for AWS SDKs.

Quickstart

pip install nova-act

from nova_act import NovaAct

with NovaAct(starting_page="https://example.com") as nova:
    nova.act("Complete your task description here")

Requires Python 3.10 or above. First run installs Playwright browsers (1-2 minutes); set NOVA_ACT_SKIP_PLAYWRIGHT_INSTALL to skip. Supports MacOS Sierra+, Ubuntu 22.04+, WSL2, or Windows 10+.

Verify before relying

• Whether bedrock-agentcore and strands-agents dependencies are optional or required for all use cases
• Specific performance characteristics or latency expectations for typical workflows
• Whether the SDK works with browsers other than Chrome/Chromium
• Cost implications of running workflows through the AWS Nova Act service

Package facts

Evidence: nova_act-3.4.187.0-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More Application Frameworks packages

Further reading