Manus - Submitting Tasks, Awaiting Completion, Sharing Results

Manus (manus.im) is a general-purpose agent that runs long-form tasks in a cloud sandbox. The web UI is a Next.js SPA; the runtime API is a separate host (api.manus.im) speaking Connect RPC. You must be signed in before the harness can drive it - hit the auth wall and stop, don't type credentials.

URL patterns

• App home / new-task composer: https://manus.im/app
• Running or completed task: https://manus.im/app/<taskId> - <taskId> is a 22-char base62-ish opaque id (character set includes letters, digits, and -/_). The same id is the session id on the API side.
• Public share page: https://manus.im/share/<taskId> - only reachable after a ShareSession call (clicking Share).
• Library / past tasks: listed in the left sidebar; the list is paged via session.v1.SessionService/ListSessions.

The title of a task page is auto-summarized from the prompt (it shortens, reflows, and sometimes paraphrases). Do not match on the original prompt text when identifying a task in the sidebar - use the taskId in the URL as the durable handle.

Path 1: Private API - api.manus.im Connect RPC

All API calls go to https://api.manus.im/ with the Connect RPC shape /<package>.v<N>.<Service>/<Method>. Requests are POST with content-type: application/json; the Connect JS client encodes request JSON as a Uint8Array before calling fetch, so a naive fetch-hook may log bodies as <<bytes:N>> - the wire content is still JSON matching the content-type (both directions). Auth is a session cookie set by manus.im, so in-browser calls Just Work if you're logged in - fetch("/session.v1.SessionService/...") from the Manus origin is fine, but cross-origin from a scraper is not.

Services observed on the wire:

To poll a task to completion without scraping the DOM:

# Browser fetch from inside the page — auth cookies are attached automatically
status = js(r"""
(async()=>{
  const r = await fetch('https://api.manus.im/session.v1.SessionService/GetSession', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {'content-type': 'application/json'},
    body: JSON.stringify({sessionId: location.pathname.split('/').pop()})
  });
  return {status: r.status, body: await r.text()};
})()
""")

(Exact field names in the request payload are not documented publicly - inspect the outgoing request with the fetch-hook snippet below the first time you run against a new Manus build.)

There is no plain REST/JSON convenience layer - every method is Connect. http_get against API routes will not work; you have to either drive the browser or speak Connect yourself. If you need a pure-HTTP client, open a PR with the Connect wire format once you reverse-engineer the request shapes.

Path 2: Browser DOM submission

browser-harness <<'PY'
new_tab("https://manus.im/app")
wait_for_load()
wait(1.5)  # SPA still hydrating; composer is a TipTap editor that mounts late
# Locate the editor and click into it — the ProseMirror div is the contenteditable.
# The composer mounts late; retry briefly if it isn't in the DOM yet.
for _ in range(10):
    rect = js(r"""
    (()=>{const ce=document.querySelector('div.ProseMirror[contenteditable="true"]');
    if(!ce) return null;
    const r=ce.getBoundingClientRect();return {x:r.x+r.width/2|0,y:r.y+r.height/2|0}})()
    """)
    if rect: break
    wait(0.5)
assert rect, "ProseMirror composer never mounted — page probably failed to hydrate"
click(rect["x"], rect["y"])
wait(0.3)
type_text("Research the top 5 espresso machines under $500 and summarize tradeoffs")
wait(0.4)
# Submit via Enter — the editor has enterkeyhint="enter" and binds Enter to submit.
# (Click the send button at the bottom-right of the composer if Enter is being blocked
#  by an autocomplete / slash-menu.)
press_key("Enter")
wait(3)
print(page_info())  # url will be /app/<taskId>
PY

Composer selectors

The input is a TipTap/ProseMirror contenteditable, not a <textarea>. Setting .value does nothing.

Submitting via coordinate click on the send button works and is often more reliable than press_key("Enter") - the key-down path occasionally opens the slash-command menu instead of submitting.

Task page (run + result)

# Wait for a task to complete
def wait_completed(timeout=1800):
    deadline = time.time() + timeout
    while time.time() < deadline:
        done = js(r"""
        [...document.querySelectorAll('*')].some(el =>
            el.childElementCount < 3 &&
            /^\s*task\s+completed\s*$/i.test((el.innerText||'').trim()))
        """)
        if done: return True
        wait(5)
    return False

Selectors on a running / completed task page:

Sharing a completed task

browser-harness <<'PY'
# On a /app/<id> page — click the "Share" button (top-right header)
rect = js(r"""
(()=>{const b=[...document.querySelectorAll('button,[role=\"button\"]')].find(x=>x.innerText?.trim()==='Share');
if(!b)return null;const r=b.getBoundingClientRect();return {x:r.x+r.width/2|0,y:r.y+r.height/2|0};})()
""")
click(rect['x'], rect['y'])
wait(1)
# Copy link button inside the popover
rect = js(r"""
(()=>{const b=[...document.querySelectorAll('button')].find(x=>x.innerText?.trim()==='Copy link');
if(!b)return null;const r=b.getBoundingClientRect();return {x:r.x+r.width/2|0,y:r.y+r.height/2|0};})()
""")
click(rect['x'], rect['y'])
wait(0.5)
# The share URL is https://manus.im/share/<same-taskId-as-/app/>
print(page_info()['url'].replace('/app/', '/share/'))
PY

Notes on the Share flow:

• Clicking Share in the top bar opens a floating popover (div[role="dialog"] inside a [data-floating-ui-portal]). It auto-runs session.v1.SessionService/ShareSession on first open and sets the task to Public access (the checkmark by default). There is an Only me option in the popover if you need to revoke.
• Clicking Share a second time toggles the popover closed - don't double-click thinking it's a no-op.
• "Copy link" writes via document.execCommand('copy'), not navigator.clipboard.writeText. If you need to capture the URL, hook both or just compute it: it's https://manus.im/share/<taskId> where the id comes straight from the URL path.
• ShareSession is idempotent - once a task is public, subsequent calls don't create a new link.

Gotchas

• The composer is TipTap/ProseMirror. document.querySelector('textarea') returns null on /app and /app/<id>. Use div.tiptap.ProseMirror[contenteditable="true"] or just coordinate-click and type_text().
• __NEXT_DATA__ is present but empty on /app/<id>. The task state is hydrated via Connect RPC after mount. Don't parse Next's inline JSON for task data - it isn't there.
• Sidebar nav items are <div>, not <a>. Click by finding the element whose innerText matches "New task" / "Search" / "Library" and using its bounding rect. location.href changes won't be reflected in <a href> attributes.
• Task titles are auto-generated from the prompt. If the exact prompt text matters for lookup, store the returned taskId (from the URL after submit) - do not grep the sidebar by prompt text.
• Connect RPC request bodies look binary in a naive fetch-hook. The Connect JS client serializes request JSON into a Uint8Array before handing it to fetch, so body instanceof Uint8Array is true even though the wire content is JSON. Decode with new TextDecoder().decode(body) if you need to see it; content-type (application/json) matches reality.
• Task submit fires no obvious single "CreateSession" RPC in the page's fetch stream - the initial create is done in the SPA's state transition that routes you to /app/<id>. Follow-on streaming updates arrive through SessionService/GetSession polls (and likely a WebSocket - install a WS hook if you need the wire format).
• "Task completed" is the only DOM marker for terminal state. Failed / cancelled tasks may surface different text - if you hit one, extend this skill.
• Cloud PC / Computer Use tasks (when the monitor icon in the composer is toggled) spawn a sandbox VM and stream a VNC-like view into an iframe. Scraping that iframe is out of scope for this skill - see interaction-skills/iframes.md if you need to drive it.
• Auth wall. If https://manus.im/app redirects to /login or a Google OAuth page, stop and ask the user to sign in. Never type credentials from a screenshot.

Debugging

Install a fetch hook on page load to see what RPC methods fire during a given action:

js(r"""
(()=>{
  if(window.__bu_fetch_hooked) return;
  window.__bu_fetch_hooked = true;
  window.__bu_fetch_log = [];
  const of = window.fetch;
  window.fetch = async function(input, init){
    const url = typeof input === 'string' ? input : input.url;
    const r = await of.apply(this, arguments);
    window.__bu_fetch_log.push({t: Date.now(), url, method: (init?.method||'GET').toUpperCase(), status: r.status});
    return r;
  };
})()
""")
# ...do the action...
print(js("window.__bu_fetch_log.filter(e => e.url.includes('api.manus.im')).slice(-20)"))

tasks.md · updated May 2, 2026 · 1,663 words