ZeTa Session Capture

About

ZeTa Session Capture — One-click authenticated crawling for QA teams

WHAT THIS EXTENSION DOES

ZeTa is a quality intelligence platform that automatically crawls your web application, discovers screens and UI elements, and runs regression tests across them. The challenge: most production apps sit behind a login wall. Until now, giving ZeTa access to your authenticated app required a manual 7-step process involving Chrome DevTools, copying scripts, running them in the console, and pasting JSON output back into ZeTa's dashboard.

This extension eliminates all of that. After a one-time setup (enter your ZeTa API URL, token, and project ID), capturing your session takes a single click — at any time, from any page in your app.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Log in to your web application as you normally would.
2. Click the ZeTa icon in Chrome's toolbar.
3. Click "Capture Session."

That's it. The extension securely reads your browser's cookies and localStorage for the current domain, packages them into the Playwright-compatible session format that ZeTa uses internally, and sends them directly to your ZeTa project. The next crawl ZeTa runs against your app will restore exactly your authenticated session — no re-login, no re-CAPTCHA, no session setup required.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR QA TEAMS

Authenticated crawling is the difference between testing your real application and testing a skeleton. Most QA coverage tools either skip authenticated pages entirely (because they can't log in) or require you to hard-code credentials into your pipeline (a security risk). ZeTa takes a third approach: capture a real browser session once, replay it safely for every crawl.

Before this extension, teams would capture sessions using Chrome DevTools — a brittle process that required developer access, broke whenever the script changed, and was easy to forget. Support tickets about "why did my crawl only find 3 pages?" almost always traced back to a missing or stale session.

With the extension installed, any team member can refresh the session from their own browser. No DevTools. No scripts. No clipboard gymnastics. Works with any authentication method: username/password, Google SSO, Okta, Azure AD, SAML, LDAP, or anything else — because you're logging in the normal way and we're just capturing what the browser already knows.

WHAT GETS CAPTURED

The extension reads, for the current tab's domain:
- All cookies (including HttpOnly cookies visible to the browser)
- All localStorage keys and values

This data is packaged in the same format that Playwright's storageState() method produces — the industry standard for browser session serialization. It is transmitted over HTTPS to your ZeTa API endpoint only, and is stored encrypted in ZeTa's database. Nothing is sent to any third-party service. The extension does not track usage, does not phone home, and does not retain any data locally beyond your saved configuration.

SECURITY MODEL

The extension requires these permissions:

• cookies — to read session cookies for the current domain
• scripting — to extract localStorage values from the active tab
• storage — to save your ZeTa API URL, token, and project ID locally
• activeTab — to identify which domain to capture from
• <all_urls> — required by Chrome for cookie access across arbitrary app domains

Your ZeTa API token is stored in Chrome's local extension storage (not synced). It is sent only to your own ZeTa API endpoint. The extension never sends data to zeta.io or any Anthropic/ZeTa infrastructure unless your configured API URL points there.

WHO SHOULD INSTALL THIS

- QA engineers who use ZeTa to crawl and test web applications
- Developers who set up ZeTa projects and need to provision session credentials
- Product managers or manual testers who want to refresh a stale session without developer help

You need a ZeTa account and an existing ZeTa project to use this extension. The extension has no standalone function without a connected ZeTa backend.

SETUP GUIDE

First-time setup (one minute, done once per project):
1. Install the extension.
2. Navigate to any page of your web application.
3. Click the ZeTa icon in the Chrome toolbar.
4. Enter your ZeTa API URL (e.g. https://your-zeta-instance.com or https://localhost:3000 for local dev).
5. Enter your ZeTa API token (found in ZeTa → Account Settings → API Tokens).
6. Enter your Project ID (found in the URL bar when viewing a ZeTa project: /projects/YOUR_PROJECT_ID).
7. Click "Save & Continue."

Capturing a session (every time your session expires or you switch roles):
1. Log in to your application as the user role you want ZeTa to test as.
2. Click the ZeTa icon.
3. Click "Capture Session."
4. Done. ZeTa will confirm receipt and show cookie/localStorage counts.

Switching roles:
Log out of your app, log in as a different user (e.g. admin vs. viewer), click the ZeTa icon, click "Capture Session" again. ZeTa's credential profiles feature lets you store multiple sessions and select which one to use per crawl.

TROUBLESHOOTING

"No cookies captured" — Make sure you are on a page that is part of your application's domain. The extension captures cookies for the exact domain of the currently active tab.

"Connection refused" — Verify your ZeTa API URL is correct and reachable. For local development, ensure ZeTa's API server is running on the configured port.

"401 Unauthorized" — Your API token may be expired or incorrect. Generate a new token in ZeTa → Account Settings → API Tokens.

"Session captured but crawl still fails login" — Some applications use server-side session tokens that expire on the server regardless of what the browser holds. Try capturing the session immediately before running the crawl, rather than hours in advance.

ABOUT ZETA

ZeTa (Quality Intelligence Platform) is a developer tool for automated UI quality assurance. It crawls web applications, discovers screens and interactive elements, runs visual and functional regression tests, and surfaces changes across releases. It is built for teams that ship frequently and need coverage without writing test scripts by hand.

The platform supports crawling across authentication methods including session restore (this extension), HTTP Basic Auth, API tokens, OAuth2/SSO via ROPC flow, TOTP-based 2FA, email OTP, and CAPTCHA solving integrations. It integrates with CI/CD pipelines and provides a dashboard for reviewing discovered screens, element inventories, and test results.

For more information, documentation, and to create an account, visit your ZeTa deployment or contact your ZeTa administrator.

OPEN SOURCE

The Chrome extension source code is part of the ZeTa quality-intelligence-platform monorepo. The extension is built with standard Chrome Manifest V3 APIs — no external runtime dependencies, no build step required, plain HTML/CSS/JS.

VERSION HISTORY

1.0.0 — Initial release. One-click session capture: cookies + localStorage → ZeTa project. Supports all authentication methods via natural browser login flow.