14 min
Playwright MCP vs CLI vs Agents: What to Use in 2026
Playwright has three ways to talk to AI: MCP, CLI, and Test Agents. Here's the decision framework an enterprise SDET uses to pick the right one for 2026.
Posts tagged "playwright"
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11 min
Playwright's New CLI Debugger Finally Works in Headless CI
Playwright 1.59 ships --debug=cli and scriptable trace analysis. The first debug surface that actually works where enterprise tests fail — headless CI.
11 min
Playwright 1.59's Screencast API Ends Useless Test Videos
Playwright 1.59 ships a Screencast API with burned-in action annotations and chapter markers. Microsoft sells it for AI agents — the real win is CI triage.
11 min
We Cut 150 Min of Test Setup with 3 Java Classes
How we built a Playwright API test data layer in Java — replacing UI setup that burned 150 minutes per run with 3 classes and a legacy API wrapping pattern.
9 min
Stop Using locator() for Everything in Playwright
Most Playwright teams still use CSS selectors via locator() out of habit. getByRole and getByText find elements the way users do — and survive redesigns.
12 min
Shared Test Users Are Sabotaging Your Parallel Suite
How shared test accounts create race conditions in parallel Playwright runs, and the 3 isolation patterns that eliminated our 12% failure rate overnight.
8 min
Stop Launching a Browser Per Test in Playwright
Launching a new browser per test in Playwright wastes 3-6 seconds each time. BrowserContext gives you the same isolation in milliseconds. Here's how to switch.
10 min
Playwright's storageState() Is Contaminating Your Tests
storageState() saves cookies, localStorage, and sessionStorage in one blob. Here's how it silently poisons parallel tests and how to strip it to cookies only.
15 min
Selenium vs Playwright in 2026: Same Test, Two Frameworks
We build the exact same Java test in both Selenium and Playwright side by side. See the real code differences in setup, locators, network mocking, and debugging
6 min
The Browser Errors Your Test Suite Never Catches
Your UI tests pass green while the console throws errors. Learn to catch JavaScript and page errors in Selenium and Playwright Java — before users do.
12 min
Your Test Suite Is Slow for 5 Reasons — Not Just One
Parallelism alone won't save your slow test suite. Here are five layers of optimization — from test design to cloud infrastructure — ranked by real impact.
13 min
Shared Session Cookies Corrupted Our Parallel Tests
Eight Playwright BrowserContexts were properly isolated, but they all loaded the same session cookie — so the server treated 8 parallel threads as one.
12 min
Self-Healing Locators Aren't Magic — Here's How They Work
Most self-healing test tools use simple fallback chains, not real AI. Learn the 4 approaches to AI locator repair and which one fits your framework best.
5 min
Playwright's onceDialog Has a Silent Handler Leak
Why onceDialog stays registered when no dialog fires, silently eating the next dialog from an unrelated action — and the onDialog/offDialog pattern that fixes it.
13 min
The Flaky Test Isn't Flaky — It's a Race Condition
How a 'flaky' Playwright test exposed a shared test user race condition in our parallel suite, and the isolation patterns that fixed it for good.
12 min
Selenium's Alert Handling Crashed Our Parallel Suite
How UnhandledAlertException broke 8-thread parallel execution and why Playwright's event-driven dialog model avoids that entire failure pattern in practice.
3 min
Playwright's onceDialog Saved Me From a Handler Leak — Until It Didn't
How onceDialog fixes permanent handler leaks from onDialog — and the one case where it creates a new problem. Includes the onDialog/offDialog pattern for dialogs that might not fire.
12 min
Stop Emailing Test Reports — Host Allure on Jenkins
Replace emailed Extent Report HTML files with a persistent Allure portal on Jenkins, so the team gets one URL, full history, and zero downloads to manage.
5 min
From Selenium Wrappers to Playwright Locators
How Playwright's locator API eliminates the need for custom wrapper classes we spent weeks building in Selenium, and when wrappers still make sense today.
11 min
I Let AI Write My Test Suite — Here's What Broke
A hands-on experiment with AI-generated Playwright tests: where LLMs save time, where they create false confidence, and the review workflow that works.
7 min
Your Selectors Keep Breaking — Start Using Text
Why text-based locators reduce test maintenance by up to 60%, and how to use them in Selenium and Playwright with real enterprise UI examples that last.
6 min
Migrating Off Cypress? Here's When to Keep It
An honest take on Cypress vs Playwright migrations from an SDET who's done three, including the signals that tell you not to migrate your suite just yet.
6 min
The Async Trap Behind Flaky Playwright Tests
The 3 async mistakes that cause flaky Playwright tests after a Selenium migration, and how we fixed a 23% intermittent failure rate in our CI pipeline.
8 min
XPath text() vs Dot — Why Your Text Match Fails
The real difference between XPath text(), dot, contains(), and normalize-space() for test automation — with examples that explain real flaky failures.