Is --enable-runtime usable for non-Google users?

[NikkeTryHard]

Hey! Love the proxy mode -- been using it to control Colab notebooks for TPU training and it works great.

Quick question about --enable-runtime though. I'd love to use it for headless/browserless workflows (long training runs where I don't want to keep a tab open), but I can't figure out how to get the OAuth config working.

The auth code requests the googleapis.com/auth/colaboratory scope, but that doesn't seem to be a publicly available API scope in Google Cloud Console. I can't find any docs on how to create a valid colab-mcp-oauth-config.json for it.

Is this something only Googlers can use right now with internal credentials, or am I missing something? If it's internal-only, any plans to open it up?

Thanks!

[teeler]

Hey there - Thanks for the feedback (also congrats for being the inaugural discussion!)

Really appreciate you asking about this - we were wondering if anyone was going to notice it, seems like you did. ;)

We're still debating on what to do for this - you are correct that this is not a publicly available API. Our team is trying to find the best way forward for this (either publishing our own client info so you can use it, or making the API public). Our plan is definitely to open it up we just need to find the right option.

Hang tight for a moment while we sort this out?

(In the meantime, if you're using this from an agent, I wonder if you might get some mileage out of using a headless browser via something like https://github.com/simonw/rodney? I haven't tried yet but it seems feasible)

[ldameron1]

#69

To clarify, is utilizing this fork which enables the functuonality allowed? Thanks!

[teeler]

Use https://github.com/googlecolab/google-colab-cli instead ;)

[NikkeTryHard]

Thx for the reply!! I would definitely love for the API to be public since pressing allow everysingle time is annoying as hell and interacting with colab via headless browser is just so much better. There seems to be bugs around it where a single tab is stuck and cant reconnect even when the mcp is killed too. I will checkout the headless browser tool later. Thx!

[cuffjosie]

Could you add some detail to what you mean by stuck? Anything you can share about your workflow would be appreciated!

[teeler]

Thx for the reply!! I would definitely love for the API to be public since pressing allow everysingle time is annoying as hell and interacting with colab via headless browser is just so much better

totally get that (out of curiosity, are you using this with claude/gemini/something else?)

There seems to be bugs around it where a single tab is stuck and cant reconnect even when the mcp is killed too. I will checkout the headless browser tool later. Thx!

@cuffjosie fyi

[cuffjosie]

Closing this discussion since we've removed runtime code entirely from this repository