Playwright CLI with SKILLS
This package provides CLI interface into Playwright. If you are using coding agents, that is the best fit.
-
CLI: Modern coding agents increasingly favor CLI–based workflows exposed as SKILLs over MCP because CLI invocations are more token-efficient: they avoid loading large tool schemas and verbose accessibility trees into the model context, allowing agents to act through concise, purpose-built commands. This makes CLI + SKILLs better suited for high-throughput coding agents that must balance browser automation with large codebases, tests, and reasoning within limited context windows.
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MCP: MCP remains relevant for specialized agentic loops that benefit from persistent state, rich introspection, and iterative reasoning over page structure, such as exploratory automation, self-healing tests, or long-running autonomous workflows where maintaining continuous browser context outweighs token cost concerns. Learn more about Playwright MCP.
- Token-efficient. Does not force page data into LLM.
- Node.js 18 or newer
- Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or any other coding agent.
npm install -g @playwright/cli@latest
playwright-cli --helpNote that you might need to force it to reclaim
playwright-clibinary from our older MCP package.npm install -g @playwright/cli@latest --force
> Use playwright skills to test https://demo.playwright.dev/todomvc/.
Take screenshots for all successful and failing scenarios.
Your agent will be running commands, but it does not mean you can't play with it manually:
playwright-cli open https://demo.playwright.dev/todomvc/ --headed
playwright-cli type "Buy groceries"
playwright-cli press Enter
playwright-cli type "Water flowers"
playwright-cli press Enter
playwright-cli check e21
playwright-cli check e35
playwright-cli screenshot
Point your agent at the CLI and let it cook. It'll read the skill off playwright-cli --help on its own:
Test the "add todo" flow on https://demo.playwright.dev/todomvc using playwright-cli.
Check playwright-cli --help for available commands.
Claude Code, GitHub copilot and others will let you install the Playwright skills into the agentic loop.
/plugin marketplace add microsoft/playwright-cli
/plugin install playwright-climkdir -p .claude/skills/playwright-cli
curl -o .claude/skills/playwright-cli/SKILL.md \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/playwright-cli/main/skills/playwright-cli/SKILL.mdPlaywright CLI is headless by default. If you'd like to see the browser, pass --headed to open:
playwright-cli open https://playwright.dev --headedPlaywright CLI will use a dedicated persistent profile by default. It means that your cookies and other storage state will be preserved between the calls. You can use different instances of the browser for different projects with sessions.
Following will result in two browsers with separate profiles being available. Pass --session to
the invocation to talk to a specific browser.
playwright-cli open https://playwright.dev
playwright-cli --session=example open https://example.com
playwright-cli session-listYou can run your coding agent with the PLAYWRIGHT_CLI_SESSION environment variable:
PLAYWRIGHT_CLI_SESSION=todo-app claude .Or instruct it to prepend --session to the calls.
Manage your sessions as follows:
playwright-cli session-list # list all sessions
playwright-cli session-stop [name] # stop session
playwright-cli session-stop-all # stop all sessions
playwright-cli session-delete [name] # delete session data along with the profilesplaywright-cli open <url> # open url
playwright-cli close # close the page
playwright-cli type <text> # type text into editable element
playwright-cli click <ref> [button] # perform click on a web page
playwright-cli dblclick <ref> [button] # perform double click on a web page
playwright-cli fill <ref> <text> # fill text into editable element
playwright-cli drag <startRef> <endRef> # perform drag and drop between two elements
playwright-cli hover <ref> # hover over element on page
playwright-cli select <ref> <val> # select an option in a dropdown
playwright-cli upload <file> # upload one or multiple files
playwright-cli check <ref> # check a checkbox or radio button
playwright-cli uncheck <ref> # uncheck a checkbox or radio button
playwright-cli snapshot # capture page snapshot to obtain element ref
playwright-cli eval <func> [ref] # evaluate javascript expression on page or element
playwright-cli dialog-accept [prompt] # accept a dialog
playwright-cli dialog-dismiss # dismiss a dialog
playwright-cli resize <w> <h> # resize the browser windowplaywright-cli go-back # go back to the previous page
playwright-cli go-forward # go forward to the next page
playwright-cli reload # reload the current pageplaywright-cli press <key> # press a key on the keyboard, `a`, `arrowleft`
playwright-cli keydown <key> # press a key down on the keyboard
playwright-cli keyup <key> # press a key up on the keyboardplaywright-cli mousemove <x> <y> # move mouse to a given position
playwright-cli mousedown [button] # press mouse down
playwright-cli mouseup [button] # press mouse up
playwright-cli mousewheel <dx> <dy> # scroll mouse wheelplaywright-cli screenshot [ref] # screenshot of the current page or element
playwright-cli pdf # save page as pdfplaywright-cli tab-list # list all tabs
playwright-cli tab-new [url] # create a new tab
playwright-cli tab-close [index] # close a browser tab
playwright-cli tab-select <index> # select a browser tabplaywright-cli console [min-level] # list console messages
playwright-cli network # list all network requests since loading the page
playwright-cli run-code <code> # run playwright code snippet
playwright-cli tracing-start # start trace recording
playwright-cli tracing-stop # stop trace recordingThe Playwright CLI can be configured using a JSON configuration file. You can specify the configuration file using the --config command line option:
playwright-cli --config path/to/config.json open example.comPlaywright CLI will load config from playwright-cli.json by default so that you did not need to specify it every time.
Configuration file schema
{
/**
* The browser to use.
*/
browser?: {
/**
* The type of browser to use.
*/
browserName?: 'chromium' | 'firefox' | 'webkit';
/**
* Keep the browser profile in memory, do not save it to disk.
*/
isolated?: boolean;
/**
* Path to a user data directory for browser profile persistence.
* Temporary directory is created by default.
*/
userDataDir?: string;
/**
* Launch options passed to
* @see https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-browsertype#browser-type-launch-persistent-context
*
* This is useful for settings options like `channel`, `headless`, `executablePath`, etc.
*/
launchOptions?: playwright.LaunchOptions;
/**
* Context options for the browser context.
*
* This is useful for settings options like `viewport`.
*/
contextOptions?: playwright.BrowserContextOptions;
/**
* Chrome DevTools Protocol endpoint to connect to an existing browser instance in case of Chromium family browsers.
*/
cdpEndpoint?: string;
/**
* CDP headers to send with the connect request.
*/
cdpHeaders?: Record<string, string>;
/**
* Timeout in milliseconds for connecting to CDP endpoint. Defaults to 30000 (30 seconds). Pass 0 to disable timeout.
*/
cdpTimeout?: number;
/**
* Remote endpoint to connect to an existing Playwright server.
*/
remoteEndpoint?: string;
/**
* Paths to TypeScript files to add as initialization scripts for Playwright page.
*/
initPage?: string[];
/**
* Paths to JavaScript files to add as initialization scripts.
* The scripts will be evaluated in every page before any of the page's scripts.
*/
initScript?: string[];
},
/**
* If specified, saves the Playwright video of the session into the output directory.
*/
saveVideo?: {
width: number;
height: number;
};
/**
* The directory to save output files.
*/
outputDir?: string;
/**
* Whether to save snapshots, console messages, network logs and other session logs to a file or to the standard output. Defaults to "stdout".
*/
outputMode?: 'file' | 'stdout';
console?: {
/**
* The level of console messages to return. Each level includes the messages of more severe levels. Defaults to "info".
*/
level?: 'error' | 'warning' | 'info' | 'debug';
},
network?: {
/**
* List of origins to allow the browser to request. Default is to allow all. Origins matching both `allowedOrigins` and `blockedOrigins` will be blocked.
*/
allowedOrigins?: string[];
/**
* List of origins to block the browser to request. Origins matching both `allowedOrigins` and `blockedOrigins` will be blocked.
*/
blockedOrigins?: string[];
};
/**
* Specify the attribute to use for test ids, defaults to "data-testid".
*/
testIdAttribute?: string;
timeouts?: {
/*
* Configures default action timeout: https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-page#page-set-default-timeout. Defaults to 5000ms.
*/
action?: number;
/*
* Configures default navigation timeout: https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-page#page-set-default-navigation-timeout. Defaults to 60000ms.
*/
navigation?: number;
};
/**
* Whether to allow file uploads from anywhere on the file system.
* By default (false), file uploads are restricted to paths within the MCP roots only.
*/
allowUnrestrictedFileAccess?: boolean;
/**
* Specify the language to use for code generation.
*/
codegen?: 'typescript' | 'none';
}