lockedout — LinkedIn from the command line

Node CLI for reading LinkedIn profiles via a persistent stealth Chromium session. Built on Patchright. No API keys, no cookie copying — just lockedout login once, then scrape from your terminal.

Easiest way to get started

Paste this to your AI agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, OpenClaw, etc.):

"Install the @lucasygu/lockedout LinkedIn CLI tool via npm. Then run lockedout login to sign in once, and lockedout status to verify. Repo: https://github.com/lucasygu/lockedout"

The agent will install the CLI, walk you through the one-time browser sign-in, and verify the session. After that, try: "Pull this person's LinkedIn profile and summarize their career trajectory" — the agent will run lockedout profile <slug> --json, parse the sections, and produce a structured summary.

Install

npm install -g @lucasygu/lockedout

Requires Node.js >= 22. Supports macOS, Linux, Windows.

First run note. The first lockedout login downloads ~150 MB of Chromium into the shared Patchright/Playwright cache (~/Library/Caches/ms-playwright/ on macOS, ~/.cache/ms-playwright/ on Linux). It's a one-time cost — subsequent runs are instant. Already have Playwright installed? It'll be a no-op; we share the cache.

After installing, run lockedout login to sign in (2FA / captcha OK). The CLI persists your session at ~/.lockedout/profile/ so you don't have to log in again until LinkedIn flags it.

Why this exists

Cookie-only LinkedIn tools (@bcharleson/linkedincli, tomquirk/linkedin-api) get sessions revoked within 1–2 calls. LinkedIn's BrowserGate / APFC fingerprint header is generated by ~2.7 MB of JS that has to run in a real browser — you can't fake it, copy it, or replay it. The only architecture that works in 2026 is "be a real browser." That's what lockedout is.

What you can do

• Profile read — pull anyone's LinkedIn profile sections (experience, education, skills, etc.) as structured JSON
• Session-aware scraping — uses your real LinkedIn session via a stealth Chromium profile; no API keys
• Built-in safety — jittered delays defeat LinkedIn's "heartbeat" detection, daily quotas cap your exposure, automatic cooldown engages on rate-limit signals
• AI-agent-first — auto-installs as a Claude Code skill (/lockedout); JSON output is designed for LLM parsing

Quick start

# One-time browser sign-in (downloads Chromium on first run)
lockedout login

# Verify the session is alive
lockedout status

# Read a profile (defaults to main_profile section only)
lockedout profile satyanadella --json

# Read multiple sections
lockedout profile satyanadella --sections experience,education,skills --json

# See today's quota usage
lockedout usage

# When something breaks — run this first
lockedout doctor

# Check / clear cooldown
lockedout cooldown status
lockedout cooldown clear

Commands

| Command | Description | |---|---| | login | Open Chromium, sign in to LinkedIn manually. Cookies persist to ~/.lockedout/profile/. | | status | Headless probe that checks if the saved session is still valid. | | logout | Wipe the local session (rm -rf ~/.lockedout/). | | profile <username> | Scrape a person profile. Accepts a slug (satyanadella) or full URL. | | doctor | End-to-end self-diagnostic — run this first when something breaks. Supports --json and --quick. | | usage | Show today's scrape count, daily cap, and cooldown status. | | cooldown status | Show remaining cooldown time. | | cooldown clear | Clear an active cooldown (use only if you're confident it was overcautious). |

Profile options

| Option | Description | Default | |---|---|---| | --sections <list> | Comma-separated sections to fetch | main_profile only | | --max-scrolls <n> | Max scroll attempts per section page | 5 | | --json | JSON output | false | | --pretty | Human-readable text | true | | --force | Bypass the daily quota cap | false |

Available sections: main_profile, experience, education, interests, honors, languages, certifications, skills, projects, posts.

⚠️ Rate-limit safety. LinkedIn detects automation behaviorally — uniform delays between actions are the #1 signal. lockedout jitters every wait (1.5–3.5s nav, 0.3–0.8s scroll), caps actions at 40/day (50 in the first 14 days post-install), and auto-engages a 30-min cooldown on any rate-limit or auth signal. Override with --force only when you accept the risk. Industry data: ~23% of LinkedIn automation users hit account restrictions within 90 days; these guards are designed to keep you out of that bucket.

Troubleshooting

Always start with: lockedout doctor (or lockedout doctor --json for tooling). It runs 8 checks across Node, Patchright, Chromium, profile, session, quota, cooldown, and the skill symlink — most "doesn't work" reports resolve at this step. If doctor is green and a scrape still fails, the problem is on LinkedIn's side, not the skill.

| Problem | Solution | |---|---| | Anything unexpected — start here | lockedout doctor | | Auth: LinkedIn requires interactive re-authentication | Run lockedout login. A 30-min cooldown will auto-engage; lockedout cooldown clear after re-login if you want to scrape immediately. | | Cooldown active: N min remaining | Wait it out, or lockedout cooldown clear if the trigger was a known false positive. | | Daily cap reached: N/N. Resets in ~Xh | Wait for UTC reset, or use --force for one more scrape if needed. | | Setting up Chromium (one-time, ~150 MB)... | Normal first-run download — wait for it to complete. | | Chromium install failed (exit N) | Run npx patchright install chromium manually to see the underlying error. | | lockedout profile returns mostly empty sections | Likely a soft rate-limit on that account. Check lockedout cooldown status. If clean, wait an hour and retry. | | Skills section returns just headers | Known v0.3.0 limitation — LinkedIn's new skills UI needs a "Show all" tab click that's not yet implemented. | | lockedout status returns logged_in: false | Session expired or LinkedIn rotated cookies. Run lockedout login again. |

How it works

| Layer | What we use | Why | |---|---|---| | Browser | Patchright — stealth-patched Playwright fork | Removes --enable-automation, adds --disable-blink-features=AutomationControlled, blocks Runtime.enable / Console.enable leaks. Necessary but not sufficient — see below. | | Session | Persistent Chromium profile at ~/.lockedout/profile/ | LinkedIn's own JS generates lidc, bcookie, bscookie, liap, and the APFC fingerprint header; we don't fake any of it. | | Chromium | Lazy-downloaded on first login | We don't bundle (npm has a 250 MB hard cap; Chromium is 280 MB). We don't postinstall-download (slow, hostile UX). First login triggers npx patchright install chromium; subsequent runs reuse the shared cache. | | Extraction | innerText from rendered DOM, not CSS selectors | Resilient to LinkedIn's frequent UI churn. The output is loosely structured text per section, ideal for LLM downstream parsing. | | Anti-detection | Jitter + daily quota + cooldown | Static fingerprint defeat (Patchright) is necessary but doesn't address behavioral patterns. lockedout adds randomized delays, a 40/day cap, and auto-engaged cooldowns. See docs/rate-limiting.md. |

AI agent integration

Claude Code

Auto-registers as a skill at install time via the postinstall hook (which symlinks ~/.claude/skills/lockedout to the npm package). After npm install -g @lucasygu/lockedout, the /lockedout slash command is available immediately.

Use the slash command directly:

/lockedout profile satyanadella
/lockedout status
/lockedout usage

Or give Claude Code natural-language tasks:

• "Pull Satya Nadella's career history from LinkedIn and summarize the timeline"
• "Compare these three profiles' education sections"
• "Check today's scrape budget before starting batch lookups"
• "Walk me through the first-time login flow"

Claude Code combines multiple commands, parses the JSON, and produces structured analysis — driven by the SKILL.md instructions inside the package.

Acknowledgments

• stickerdaniel/linkedin-mcp-server (Apache-2.0) — the Python MCP server we ported to Node/TypeScript. The innerText-extraction strategy, the auth-barrier and rate-limit detection, the persistent-profile design — all credit to the upstream maintainers.
• Patchright by Kaliiiiiiiiii-Vinyzu — the stealth-patched Playwright fork that makes any of this possible. Maintained as the modern replacement for the (dead since 2023) puppeteer-extra-stealth.

Disclaimer

LinkedIn's Terms of Service prohibit automated access to the platform. Per 2025–2026 industry data (Salesflow, Salesloop, Connectsafely.ai, others), approximately 23% of users running LinkedIn automation tools hit an account restriction within 90 days. lockedout adds jittered delays, daily quotas, and an automatic cooldown circuit-breaker to reduce that risk, but cannot eliminate it.

Use responsibly:

• One personal account per machine. Do not use lockedout on accounts you can't afford to lose.
• Read docs/rate-limiting.md before any bulk operation.
• This project is not affiliated with LinkedIn.

License

MIT © 2026 Lucas Gu