Browser Automation with playwright-cli

This skill should bias toward short, deterministic workflows.

Priority rules

1. [CRITICAL] If the user simply wants to read, summarize, or extract text content from a URL without interacting with it, DO NOT use web_browser. You MUST use the web_extractor skill instead, as it is much faster and cleaner.
2. Use this skill ONLY when you need to act like a real user (click buttons, fill forms, bypass complex CAPTCHAs, or take visual screenshots).
3. If using this skill, prefer open + snapshot + read snapshot file over exploratory command chains.
4. Avoid debug-only commands unless the user explicitly asks for debugging.
5. Only use eval when the user explicitly requests JS evaluation.

Preferred workflow: summarize a web page

# 1) Open target page directly
playwright-cli open https://example.com

# 2) Capture structured snapshot
playwright-cli snapshot --filename=page.yml

# 3) Read snapshot artifact from filesystem
# /app/.playwright-cli/page.yml

# 4) (Optional) navigate and take another snapshot if needed
playwright-cli click e3
playwright-cli snapshot --filename=page-after-click.yml

# 5) Close browser session
playwright-cli close

Snapshot artifacts

• Snapshot files are the primary source for page extraction.
• In this project container runtime, snapshots are stored under /app/.playwright-cli/.
• If --filename is omitted, playwright-cli creates a timestamped .yml file.
• For summarization tasks, always save with --filename to make the read step deterministic.

Minimal command set (default)

playwright-cli open <url>
playwright-cli goto <url>
playwright-cli snapshot --filename=<name>.yml
playwright-cli click <ref>
playwright-cli fill <ref> "<text>"
playwright-cli type "<text>"
playwright-cli press <key>
playwright-cli tab-list
playwright-cli tab-select <index>
playwright-cli close

Use-case examples

Example: README/web article summarization

playwright-cli open https://github.com/glwlg/X-bot/blob/master/README.md
playwright-cli snapshot --filename=readme.yml
# then read /app/.playwright-cli/readme.yml and summarize
playwright-cli close

Example: Form filling

playwright-cli open https://example.com/form
playwright-cli snapshot --filename=form-before.yml
playwright-cli fill e1 "user@example.com"
playwright-cli fill e2 "password123"
playwright-cli click e3
playwright-cli snapshot --filename=form-after.yml
playwright-cli close

Example: Navigate one level deeper before extraction

playwright-cli open https://example.com
playwright-cli snapshot --filename=home.yml
playwright-cli click e5
playwright-cli snapshot --filename=detail.yml
playwright-cli close

Avoid by default

• Avoid eval for standard extraction/summarization tasks.
• Avoid debug-centric commands (console/network/tracing/video) unless explicitly requested.
• Avoid command thrashing (open -> snapshot -> goto -> eval loops without reading snapshots).