Playwright cli automation
Skill PramodDutta/qaskills/seed-skills/playwright-cli-automation
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What its author says it does
Copied from the file, not written here
CLI-first browser automation using Playwright CLI for navigation, form filling, snapshots, screenshots, data extraction, and UI-flow debugging from the terminal.
The file declares its own license as MIT. That is the author’s claim about this one file, and it is not the same thing as the license GitHub reports for the repository, which is listed with the other numbers below.
SKILL.md
2.9 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it
Playwright CLI Automation
Drive a real browser from the terminal using playwright-cli. Prefer the bundled wrapper script so the CLI works even when it is not globally installed.
Treat this skill as CLI-first automation. Do not pivot to @playwright/test unless the user explicitly asks for test files.
Prerequisite check (required)
Before proposing commands, check whether npx is available (the wrapper depends on it):
command -v npx >/dev/null 2>&1
If it is not available, pause and ask the user to install Node.js/npm (which provides npx). Provide these steps verbatim:
# Verify Node/npm are installed
node --version
npm --version
# If missing, install Node.js/npm, then:
npm install -g @playwright/cli@latest
playwright-cli --help
Once npx is present, proceed with the wrapper script. A global install of playwright-cli is optional.
Core workflow
- Open the page.
- Snapshot to get stable element refs.
- Interact using refs from the latest snapshot.
- Re-snapshot after navigation or significant DOM changes.
- Capture artifacts (screenshot, pdf, traces) when useful.
Minimal loop:
playwright-cli open https://example.com
playwright-cli snapshot
playwright-cli click e3
playwright-cli snapshot
When to snapshot again
Snapshot again after:
- navigation
- clicking elements that change the UI substantially
- opening/closing modals or menus
- tab switches
Refs can go stale. When a command fails due to a missing ref, snapshot again.
Recommended patterns
Form fill and submit
playwright-cli open https://example.com/form
playwright-cli snapshot
playwright-cli fill e1 "[email protected]"
playwright-cli fill e2 "password123"
playwright-cli click e3
playwright-cli snapshot
Debug a UI flow with traces
playwright-cli open https://example.com --headed
playwright-cli tracing-start
# ...interactions...
playwright-cli tracing-stop
Multi-tab work
playwright-cli tab-new https://example.com
playwright-cli tab-list
playwright-cli tab-select 0
playwright-cli snapshot
Guardrails
- Always snapshot before referencing element ids like
e12. - Re-snapshot when refs seem stale.
- Prefer explicit commands over
evalandrun-codeunless needed. - Use
--headedwhen a visual check will help. - Default to CLI commands and workflows, not Playwright test specs.