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Access Steel Browser CDP Only via SSH Tunnel

Remote browser APIs are useful. Public CDP ports are not. Bind Steel to loopback, tunnel in, call from the Mac.

Target shape

• VPS: API 127.0.0.1:3000, CDP 127.0.0.1:9223
• Public: only SSH (and maybe your static site on :80/:443)
• Mac: tunnel then curl http://127.0.0.1:3000

Tunnel

ssh -N -L 3000:127.0.0.1:3000 -L 9223:127.0.0.1:9223 user@vps

Verify bind on VPS

ss -lntp | grep -E ':(3000|9223)\b'

You want 127.0.0.1, not 0.0.0.0.

Why this ranks as a niche page

People search the product name + “tunnel” / “localhost” / “CDP” after they hit connection errors. One checklist page captures that intent.