Playwright regression testing

Playwright Regression Testing (TypeScript)

Strategy and best practices for automated regression testing of web applications using Playwright with TypeScript.

Activation: This skill is triggered when working with regression test strategy, test suite selection, test prioritization, CI/CD pipeline testing, flaky test management, test sharding, or optimizing test execution for web applications using Playwright.

When to Use This Skill

• Plan regression suites with risk-based and change-based test selection
• Organize tests into tiers (smoke, sanity, selective, full regression)
• Optimize execution with parallelization, sharding, and time-budget strategies
• Integrate with CI/CD using GitHub Actions pipelines
• Manage flaky tests with quarantine, retry policies, and root cause tracking
• Monitor suite health with execution time, flake rate, and detection metrics
• Select tests after changes using git diff analysis and impact mapping

Do NOT Use For

• Authoring a single UI spec or page-object model (use playwright-e2e-testing).
• Driving a live browser interactively for debugging (use playwright-cli).
• Selenium/Java regression suites (use webapp-selenium-testing).
• API contract testing in isolation (use api-testing).

Prerequisites

Requirement	Details
Node.js	v18+ recommended
Playwright	@playwright/test package
TypeScript	typescript configured in project
Browsers	Installed via npx playwright install
Git	Required for change-based test selection
GitHub Actions	Recommended CI/CD platform

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Quick Reference

Tiers: Smoke (<2min, every commit) → Sanity (<10min, every PR) → Selective (<30min, on merge) → Full (<60min, nightly/pre-release).

Key tags: @smoke, @sanity, @regression, @e2e, @api, @destructive — exactly one per test, never on describe() blocks. Domain-specific extensions (e.g., @a11y in accessibility skills) are allowed alongside, but only one execution tag per test.

CLI: npx playwright test --grep @smoke | --grep @regression | --grep-invert @destructive | --shard=1/4 | --last-failed

For full tier model, regression types table, and tag taxonomy, see references/regression-catalogs.md.

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Red Flags

• Treating flaky tests as "fixed" by adding retries or waitForTimeout — quarantine and root-cause instead.
• Running the full suite on every commit — use tiered selection (smoke on commit, full nightly).
• Quarantining tests silently with no tracking ticket — quarantine must be temporary and owned.
• No change-based selection — running everything regardless of what changed wastes CI budget.
• Ignoring suite-health metrics (rising duration, climbing flake rate) until they block releases.

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References

Document	Content
Regression Strategy	Tier model (smoke→full), regression types, triggers, directory layout, test tagging and tag taxonomy
Regression Selection	Test selection (change-based, risk-based, historical, time-budget) and test naming conventions
Regression Best Practices	Locator priority, web-first assertions, test independence, test.step() reporting, complete worked example test
CI/CD Integration	GitHub Actions tiered pipeline, sharding, merge reports, Playwright config, performance optimization, CLI reference
Flaky Management	Retry policies, quarantine strategies, detection checklist, suite health metrics, troubleshooting

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Verification

• Smoke test subset identified — Tagged @smoke tests run in under 2 minutes
• No test duplication — Each scenario tested exactly once at the appropriate level
• Test isolation verified — Running tests in random order produces same results as sequential
• Flaky test baseline established — All tests pass 5/5 consecutive runs