Practical notes on direct HTTP, browser escalation, proxies, JSON responses, and the messy edge cases behind managed scraping.
Browsers are powerful, but they are not free. Start with a fingerprinted request, escalate only when the target earns it.
Why scrape responses need content type, body type, headers, and raw body fields instead of a single overloaded html field.
A production checklist for checking direct HTTP proxy egress, browser proxy egress, and the traps that make one tier look healthy while another leaks the host IP.