The Cookie Banner That Silently Breaks Your Agent

The agent clicked the right button. The banner was on top of it. Nothing about the model is wrong here; the page changed shape and the agent did not notice.

Why it is so common

Consent banners appear on the first visit, which for an agent with a fresh profile is every visit. They render late, after the page the agent already inspected. And they sit above everything, so a click aimed at the real button lands on the overlay and produces no navigation, no error, and no clue.

Detect it properly

Before clicking, ask the page what element is actually at those coordinates. If it is not the element you meant, something is covering it. This one check catches banners, modals, chat widgets and sticky headers alike.

const covered = await page.evaluate(([x, y]) => {
  const el = document.elementFromPoint(x, y);
  return el ? el.tagName + " " + (el.id || el.className) : "nothing";
}, [x, y]);
// If `covered` is not your target, dismiss whatever it is before clicking again.

Fix it once for the fleet

Banners vary by site and by region, and the dismiss button is never in the same place twice. Rather than hard-coding selectors that rot, let a person dismiss it once in a live session on the site that broke, and record that as a procedure. Every future run on that site starts by following it. Persisting the browser profile also stores the consent, so most sites never show the banner to that agent again.

Questions people ask