Tool Cognitive Effort

Measure the total cognitive effort for a persona to use a page. Uses the full 6-layer Sequential Transport Chain from the Cognitive Optimal Transport framework.

Usage

npx cbrowser cognitive-effort --url "https://example.com" --persona first-timer

MCP Tool

{
  "name": "cognitive_effort",
  "arguments": {
    "url": "https://example.com",
    "persona": "first-timer",
    "device": "mobile",
    "useValues": false
  }
}

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
url	string	Yes	URL to analyze
persona	string	Yes	Persona name (e.g., first-timer, cognitive-adhd, power-user)
device	string	No	Device type: mobile, tablet, desktop
useValues	boolean	No	Turn on motivational value adjustments (default: false)
geoRegion	string	No	Route through a residential proxy in a region
waitAfterLoad	number	No	Extra ms to wait after page loads (e.g., 3000 for translated sites)
waitForSelector	string	No	CSS selector to wait for after load (e.g., [data-translated])
_browserToken	string	No	Reuse an existing browser session for pages that depend on state

Response

Returns a complete cognitive transport analysis:

• Total CTC -- Overall cognitive transport cost (0 to unlimited, lower is better)
• Per-layer breakdown -- Cost for each of the 6 layers:
  1. Saliency (what grabs visual attention)
  2. Cognitive Load (how much information to process)
  3. Decision (how complex the choices are)
  4. Motor (how hard it is to interact physically)
  5. Frustration (emotional cost)
  6. Readability (how hard the text is to understand)
• Bottleneck -- Which layer causes the most difficulty
• Abandonment risk -- How likely the user is to give up (percentage)
• Motor overlay URL -- Visual overlay showing element accessibility

Related Tools

• attention_analysis -- Visual saliency per persona
• site_cognitive_assessment -- Full 3-gate pipeline
• cognitive_load_estimate -- Quick 8-dimension estimate
• Cognitive Optimal Transport -- Research foundation