/playwright-cli

STARTER_CHARACTER = 🎭

playwright-cli

Driving a browser from the shell. Each command prints the executed Playwright code, the page state, and a fresh snapshot.

The loop

Snapshot to see the page, act on an element by its ref, snapshot again.

playwright-cli snapshot          # accessibility tree with [ref=e8] handles
playwright-cli click e8          # act on a ref
playwright-cli snapshot          # confirm the result

Refs are not stable. Any DOM change renumbers them — re-snapshot before acting on a page that just changed. Acting on a stale ref hits the wrong element or none.

For a large page, snapshot a region instead of the whole tree: snapshot e34 or snapshot --depth=4.

Targeting elements

A target is one of three things — a ref, a CSS selector, or a Playwright locator:

playwright-cli click e8
playwright-cli click ".todo-list .toggle"
playwright-cli click "getByRole('button', { name: 'Submit' })"
playwright-cli click "getByText('buy milk')"

A bare descriptive phrase is not a target. click "the submit button" is parsed as a CSS selector and fails with "does not match any elements". Prefer refs; reach for getByRole/getByText when a ref won't survive a re-render.

Key commands

playwright-cli goto https://example.com
playwright-cli fill e5 "user@example.com" --submit   # clear, type, then Enter — one step
playwright-cli type "free text into the focused element"
playwright-cli press Enter                            # also: Tab, Escape, ArrowDown
playwright-cli select e9 "option-value"
playwright-cli check e12        # uncheck / hover / dblclick likewise
playwright-cli screenshot       # saves to .playwright-cli/

fill works on React/controlled inputs where raw DOM events don't. After filling, the field must blur before dependent values (totals, validation) update — --submit or a following press Tab does that.

Inspecting and verifying

playwright-cli eval "el => el.getAttribute('data-testid')" e5   # attributes the snapshot hides
playwright-cli console                                          # page console messages
playwright-cli requests                                         # network log, then `request <n>`

--raw strips the wrapper so output pipes, and proves what an action changed:

playwright-cli --raw snapshot > before.yml
playwright-cli click e8
playwright-cli --raw snapshot > after.yml
diff before.yml after.yml

Sessions

open launches a fresh browser; --persistent keeps cookies across runs. To drive an already-running, logged-in browser instead, attach over CDP. See references/attaching-to-chrome.md.

Name parallel browsers with -s=<name> (omit it for the implicit default session). playwright-cli list, close, close-all.

Full command set

The above is the working subset. The CLI ships its own exhaustive reference — tabs, storage, mocking, tracing, video, codegen. See references/full-command-reference.md.