playwright-cli

Use playwright-cli to open a page, take a snapshot to get element refs, then run commands like click, fill, and type against those refs. Each command returns an updated page snapshot so you can chain interactions step by step.

Run the test with npx playwright test --debug=cli in the background, then attach with playwright-cli attach using the printed session name. The test pauses at the start, letting you snapshot the page, inspect console and network activity, and rehearse fixes.

Yes. Every action performed with playwright-cli prints the equivalent Playwright TypeScript code, such as page.getByRole locators, which you can copy directly into test files. Assertions must be added manually using matchers like toBeVisible or toHaveText.

Yes. Use the -s flag to create named sessions with independent cookies, storage, cache, and tabs. You can list sessions with playwright-cli list and clean up with close, close-all, or delete-data.

Use playwright-cli route with a URL pattern and options like --status, --body, or --header to intercept requests. For conditional logic or response modification, use run-code with page.route to inspect requests and fulfill custom responses.

Video recording produces WebM files and adds slight overhead to automation, with large recordings consuming significant disk space. For debugging with DOM snapshots and network details, tracing is a better fit than video.