playwriter

What This Skill Does

Playwriter is a powerful browser automation tool designed to bridge the gap between AI-driven scripting and existing local browser sessions. Unlike standard headless automation that starts from a blank state, Playwriter hooks directly into a persistent Chrome instance. This means the AI can leverage your existing authenticated sessions, cookies, and active browser extensions. It utilizes the robust Playwright Page API, allowing developers and users to execute complex interaction logic, intercept network traffic, and perform accessibility audits directly from the command line or within an agentic workflow.

Installation

To begin using Playwriter, ensure you have Node.js installed on your system. First, install the global CLI tool via npm:

npm i -g playwriter

Next, install the required Playwriter Chrome extension from the official repository and ensure it is enabled in your browser. Once installed, initialize your session management:

1. Launch your Chrome instance with the extension active.
2. Create a new session with playwriter session new.
3. List and track your active sessions using playwriter session list.

To integrate this into the OpenClaw ecosystem, execute: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/paulpete/playwriter.

Use Cases

• Authenticated UI Testing: Navigate to internal dashboards (like Ralph) that require MFA or session cookies without re-authenticating.
• Complex Web Workflows: Automate multi-step form fills, data entry, or UI clicks in environments where session persistence is critical.
• Dynamic Network Interception: Modify API responses on the fly during development to test edge cases without modifying the backend.
• Accessibility Auditing: Generate annotated accessibility snapshots to identify missing ARIA roles or unreachable form fields.

Example Prompts

1. "Playwriter, go to the Ralph dashboard, click the 'Project' tab, and extract the latest status updates from the main table."
2. "Using my current session, fill out the registration form at example.com with these details: [email protected], password123, and submit."
3. "Run a network interceptor on the current session to inject a mock successful response into all /api/v1/user calls."

Tips & Limitations

• Stability: Always prioritize getByRole and getByLabel selectors over CSS or XPath for the most resilient scripts.
• State Management: Use the provided state object to store variables across multiple script executions within the same session.
• Cleanup: Sessions do not expire automatically; manage them periodically using session list and session close to keep your environment clean.
• Warning: Because Playwriter interacts with your active browser, ensure you do not execute unknown or untrusted scripts against sensitive authenticated sessions.