#4 Digest
This week’s roundup dives into supercharging your Playwright setup with smarter sharding and tagging strategies to speed up tests and tame messy reports. We’re also exploring how AI-powered agents are leveling up automation and tackling real-world tasks, plus some clever hacks for cross-browser testing and scraping without official APIs. Grab the freshest community insights and tools to sharpen your Playwright game.
Playwright Agents: Quick Intro
This article explains the new Playwright Agents introduced in version 1.56, detailing how the Planner, Generator, and Healer agents automate test scenario generation, test code creation, and flaky test fixing to improve testing workflows.
Playwright + AI = Stagehand (It's Better Than It Sounds)
This article introduces Stagehand, a library that enhances Playwright with AI-powered features like resilient selectors, data extraction, and self-healing tests, improving browser automation stability and maintainability.
Configuring Playwright MCP Like a Pro: Custom Headers, Cookies, and Smarter Agents
This article shows how to configure Playwright MCP more effectively using custom headers, cookies, init scripts, and browser extensions. It highlights practical ways to handle login flows, control browser behavior, and make MCP agents smarter and more reliable.
Building AI browser agents that actually work: lessons from automating password changes
This article discusses building AI-driven browser automation agents using Playwright and LLMs, sharing practical lessons and architecture tips for robust, production-ready automation beyond traditional scripted tools.
Finding Smarter ReportPortal Alternatives
This article compares ReportPortal with modern test reporting alternatives focused on Playwright, highlighting tools that offer AI-powered insights, simplified onboarding, and tailored dashboards to improve test analytics and debugging workflows.
Sharding in Playwright: Speeding Up Your Test Suites and CI Pipelines
This article explains how to implement sharding in Playwright to speed up test suites and CI pipelines, covering configuration details, parallelization strategies, and merging shard reports effectively.
Stop Refreshing Weather Sites: Automate Alerts with Python and Playwright
This article details building a practical end-to-end Python automation pipeline using Playwright to scrape dynamic weather sites, store data in SQLite, apply alert rules, and send email notifications, showcasing robust web scraping techniques and real-world challenges.
Why Your Playwright Test Reports Are Messy (And How test.step() Fixes It)
This article explains how to improve Playwright test reports by using structured test steps with test.step(), decorators, or comment-based tools, enabling clearer failure diagnostics and debugging.
Cross-Browser Testing with Playwright and WebdriverIO
This in-depth article explains best practices for cross-browser testing using Playwright and WebdriverIO, including configuration examples, parallel execution, retries, reporting, and CI/CD integration to help developers ensure reliable multi-browser test automation.
Publishing to LinkedIn Without the Official API: A Cookie-Based Approach
This article explains how to automate posting to LinkedIn personal profiles using Playwright by leveraging browser cookies to bypass API limitations, including handling session management and dynamic UI selectors.
Playwright Review 2025: What Users Say About This Test Automation Framework
This detailed 2025 review of Playwright covers its features, user experiences, strengths, and limitations for test automation, providing a comprehensive analysis useful for engineers considering or using Playwright.
How To Categorize Your Tests in Playwright using Tags to Make Your Testing Suite Less Terrible
This article explains how to use tags in Playwright to organize, selectively run, and exclude tests, improving test suite management and efficiency for projects of any size.
Playwright Testing: Build Reliable End-to-End Tests
This comprehensive guide covers setting up Playwright for end-to-end testing, best practices, advanced techniques like visual regression and performance testing, CI/CD integration, and solutions to common challenges, making it highly valuable for Playwright users.
Playwright + AI, Faster Migrations, Smarter Tests and More
This article covers recent developments involving Playwright, including tools like Test Driver Studio for AI-driven test generation, resources for migrating Cypress tests to Playwright via AI, and integration of AI agents such as Goose with Playwright MCP, offering practical insights for improving Playwright test automation workflows.