In this tutorial, we set up Microsoft Fara in Google Colab and run a browser-use workflow from start to finish. We begin by cloning the repository, installing the package, preparing Playwright, and verifying that the installed Fara files work even when the package layout changes. Instead of immediately relying on a heavy Fara-7B deployment, we create a small mock OpenAI-compatible endpoint that returns valid browser actions. This lets us test the same agent loop that Fara uses for real tasks, including sending a task, receiving model-style action responses, and executing those actions through the browser. We also keep the endpoint configuration flexible, so the same notebook can later connect to Azure Foundry, vLLM, LM Studio, or Ollama when we want to use the real Fara-7B model.

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import os import sys import json import time import socket import subprocess import importlib from pathlib import Path USE_REAL_FARA_ENDPOINT = False REAL_FARA_BASE_URL = "http://localhost:5000/v1" REAL_FARA_API_KEY = "not-needed" REAL_FARA_MODEL = "microsoft/Fara-7B" TASK = "Open example.com and tell me what the page is." WORKDIR = Path("/content/fara_tutorial") REPO_DIR = Path("/content/fara") REPO_SRC = REPO_DIR / "src" OUTPUT_DIR = WORKDIR / "outputs" ENDPOINT_CONFIG_PATH = WORKDIR / "endpoint_config.json" MOCK_SERVER_FILE = WORKDIR / "mock_fara_endpoint.py" WORKDIR.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True) OUTPUT_DIR.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

We import the required Python libraries and define the main configuration values for the tutorial. We decide whether to use the mock endpoint or connect to a real Fara endpoint, and we set the browser task that the agent needs to perform. We also create the working folders and file paths for the repository, endpoint configuration, mock server, and output files.

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def run_cmd(cmd, cwd=None, check=True, env=None): print(f"\n$ {cmd}") result = subprocess.run( cmd, shell=True, cwd=str(cwd) if cwd else None, text=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, env=env, ) print(result.stdout) if check and result.returncode != 0: raise RuntimeError(f"Command failed with exit code {result.returncode}: {cmd}") return result def wait_for_port(host, port, timeout=60): start = time.time() while time.time() - start < timeout: try: with socket.create_connection((host, port), timeout=2): return True except OSError: time.sleep(1) return False print("Python:", sys.version) print("Working directory:", WORKDIR)