The browser

You drive a real browser from your shell with playwright-cli: open a page, read it as a snapshot, act on elements by ref.

In this app

Everything the app has to say about the browser is here; the prompts do not repeat it.

Every browser goes through here. A job that names a browser, a site, a URL, a sign-in or a tab is this one's. With --headed the window playwright-cli opens is a real one on their screen — they can watch it and type into it. Never drive Chrome by clicking it through the machine (osascript, peekaboo, System Events): that window cannot be snapshotted or acted on by ref.

The browser they already have open is reached through its extension. For a tab they left or a profile they are signed into, playwright-cli attach --extension=chrome opens a page in the Chrome they use and waits until they allow it there. The tab they pick on that page — one they left open, or that page itself — is yours, signed in as they are; their other tabs stay theirs. It needs the Playwright extension in their Chrome: when the command says it is missing, give them the link it prints and ask. The link to their Chrome can drop between commands: when one answers that the browser is not open, attach again — open would start a browser of your own instead. A click there waits on a tab that is in front: --raw run-code "async page => page.bringToFront()" first.

Your browser is your own on this job. Its session is already in your shell (PLAYWRIGHT_CLI_SESSION): never pass -s=, never close-all or kill-all — other bots and jobs are running theirs. A follow-up uses this same session: read snapshot to continue where you left off; use open only if it is closed.

Headless is yours; headed is theirs. A browser opens headless: nobody sees it, and the app closes it once the job is done or has sat an hour without a step. Finding, reading and comparing stay headless, however many pages it takes: a window that opens by itself lands on whatever they are doing, a call included. --headed puts a real window on their screen, and that window outlives the job until they close it or cancel or delete the job. It is for three things: the thing itself once the job has it — the products they asked you to find, the order sitting at checkout for them to confirm, the map with the pin dropped, the page they asked to watch — a sign-in for them to finish, and a payment for them to press. Open it --headed, leave it open, and say in your answer that it is on their screen. A window you opened headed only to get past a wall and are done with, close yourself. A window is never how you look at your own work: a page, a deck or a canvas you made is shown to you by its skill's shots and look_at, and reaches them under your answer — nor is open on their desktop. Only a job they cancel or delete takes its windows with it.

A payment is theirs to press. Take a purchase, a top-up or a subscription as far as the last screen before money moves, open it --headed, and answer with what it buys, for how much, and that the pay button is on their screen. That is the job done, not stopped — never press it yourself, whatever the request said.

A site that will want a session before it shows you anything — a shop, a console, a dashboard, an account page — starts --headed --persistent rather than finding out headless and starting over.

A wall is the site's answer. A 403, an "access denied" page, a check for automated traffic or a captcha is the site saying no to a bot, and getting round it is not yours to do: no other browser, profile or disguise, no waiting it out. Take what the job needs from where it is published otherwise — another source, the site's own API, a search. When only that page will do and it is one they would open themselves — the shop they named, their bank — open it --headed for them and ask, as a sign-in below: a person may pass where a bot may not. Otherwise say in your report which url refused you, and bring back what you have.

A sign-in is a fork, not a wall. Three ways through, and which one fits is yours to read off the job:

• A sign-in the app already keeps. Cheapest when it works, so try it before the other two. It goes into the browser you have open, so the order is open, then the sign_in_use tool with the site, then goto — a state loaded with no browser open is refused, and one loaded before you open again is thrown away with the browser that held it. Open the window you mean to keep first, headed or not. goto last because cookies without a reload leave the signed-out page that was already drawn, which reads as an expired session when it is not.
• Their own Chrome. Attached to it as above, you are signed in as they are. It is the way through for a site that still shows you signed out right after sign_in_use — some refuse a sign-in carried between browsers, and signing in again in your window will not last there either.
• They sign in themselves. open <the login url> --headed --persistent — the login page, not the front door. For another account on a site the app already keeps, leave out --persistent: a new browser holds none of them, and signing out of a kept one to make room can end its session for every bot. Then a question through Thursday, to the user, in one line saying what to sign into and that the window is open, options Signed in / Not now, and stop. The window stays open while the job waits; continue from a fresh snapshot when the answer comes. A captcha or a code sent to their phone is the same move. Not show — it blocks waiting for annotations nobody will send. Once they are in, call the sign_in_keep tool: the app keeps the sign-in for your later work, and they can sign out of it in Settings. The window was for the sign-in, so it closes and your browser goes on without one, signed in, on the same page — unless what comes next there is theirs to see, the products to choose or a checkout to confirm: then pass keepWindow and it stays.

Never guess or invent a secret, or go looking for one somewhere they did not point you at. An email or username they gave you is not a secret — fill it and press next. memory_recall the note for that site when you are missing the address they use.

Reading a page. Every command writes a snapshot file and prints its path. find "Create Key" returns only the matching nodes with a few lines around each — use it when you know what you are after. cat the file when you need the whole layout. snapshot e34 is one region; --raw eval is one value. Pulling the markup in (innerHTML, curl) spends a page of context on a navigation menu; the snapshot is the same page for a fraction of it. On anything long, find and snapshot <ref> are the cheap way through — keep raw HTML for when the markup itself is what you need. A page that draws itself from a fetch is cheaper at the source: requests numbers what it pulled, response-body N prints one — the data already parsed, rather than read back out of the DOM. What only the eye can tell — a chart, a photo, whether the layout came out — is a screenshot and then the look_at tool, when you hold it.

Refs go stale after anything that changed the page — snapshot again before the next click. A page that looks empty right after loading is still rendering. A click that seems to do nothing may have opened a tab: tab-list, tab-select N.

One command, not one turn per step. Chain steps that need no look in between with &&. What a click brings in is not there on the very next read: wait for its text in the same command, --raw run-code "async page => { await page.waitForFunction(t => document.body.innerText.includes(t), '<text>'); }" — getByText(…).waitFor() times out when the first match is hidden.

Search and locale. A search engine's results page is for people, and most refuse a browser a script drives. Find urls with the web_search tool; without one, search where the answer lives — the site's own search box, Wikipedia — and say in your report that you had no web search. Pages answer in this machine's language and currency; put the country in the url when the job is about another.

Pictures for a document come off the page, never from memory: --raw eval "JSON.stringify([...document.images].filter(i => i.naturalWidth > 200).map(i => i.currentSrc))".

Local HTML. file: URLs are refused, and a fixed port lets two jobs capture each other's pages. To open or print one: node <skill dir>/scripts/serve.mjs <dir> > <scratch>/serve.log 2>&1 &, read the address from that log, goto <address><file>.html; pdf --filename=out.pdf prints it, in a headless browser. Kill the server when done.

Scripts in <skill dir>/scripts: sheet.mjs puts many pictures on one image for a single look_at, webimage.mjs saves a page's own picture with its credit line, and session.mjs lets a script of yours drive this session — references/scripts.md. What one run-code call can do — several reads at once, a wait, a download, the clipboard — is references/run-code.md; a recording of the screen for the user is references/recording.md.

Snapshots land in .playwright-cli/ and are cleared after a few days. A file you name — --filename=, a pdf, a download — goes under scratch/, or your folder under artifacts/ when it is the result.

Install

The app fetches the browser itself when it starts — Google Chrome for Testing, set in your shell, never the user's own Chrome — so this is only for a machine where that never finished. open failing with a missing executable is the tell:

playwright-cli install-browser chromium

It downloads ~280 MB and prints nothing when the build is already there. If it fails, say so and stop — do not fall back to a browser you found on the machine.

On Linux, open failing because the browser closed before any page, with an empty browser log, is missing system libraries rather than a missing download. Installing them needs administrator rights: tell the user to run npx playwright install-deps chromium once, and stop.

Commands

playwright-cli open                       # headless; add a url to navigate at once
playwright-cli open <url> --headed        # a real window on their screen
playwright-cli open <url> --persistent    # keep a profile between opens
playwright-cli open --mobile              # mobile layout — lighter pages, smaller snapshots
playwright-cli attach --extension=chrome  # their own Chrome: the tab they pick
playwright-cli goto <url>
playwright-cli go-back | go-forward | reload
playwright-cli resize 1280 800            # before a screenshot or a pdf

playwright-cli snapshot                   # the page, as refs — written to a file
playwright-cli snapshot e34               # one region
playwright-cli find "Sign in"             # matching nodes with context
playwright-cli find --regex "/sign (in|up)/i"

playwright-cli click e3                   # also: dblclick, hover, drag e2 e8, drop e8
playwright-cli fill e5 "text" --submit    # --submit presses Enter after
playwright-cli type "text"
playwright-cli press Enter                # ArrowDown, Escape, …
playwright-cli select e9 "option-value"
playwright-cli check e12 | uncheck e12
playwright-cli upload ./file.pdf
playwright-cli dialog-accept ["text"] | dialog-dismiss

playwright-cli tab-list | tab-new [url] | tab-select N | tab-close [N]

playwright-cli requests                   # what the page fetched, numbered
playwright-cli request 7                  # one of them whole: headers, body, response
playwright-cli response-body 7            # just the body

playwright-cli eval "document.title"
playwright-cli eval "el => el.textContent" e5
playwright-cli --raw eval "…"             # only the value, nothing else printed

playwright-cli screenshot [e5] [--filename=x.png]
playwright-cli pdf --filename=page.pdf
playwright-cli close

Targets are refs from the snapshot (e15). A css selector or a Playwright locator works too: click "#main > button.submit", click "getByRole('button', { name: 'Submit' })".