managing-locators

name	managing-locators
description	Explores features to discover stable locators and fixes broken locators in Playwright tests. Two modes — explore (proactive discovery) and fix (reactive repair) — both using playwright-cli for live browser interaction.

Managing Locators

Discover or repair Playwright locators using live browser interaction via playwright-cli. Determine the mode from the user's request:

• Explore mode: User wants to investigate a feature/page for locators
• Fix mode: User has a failing test or broken locator to repair

Pre-flight checks

Run these before starting any work:

# 1. Verify playwright-cli is installed
playwright-cli --version

# 2. Verify Playwright version is 1.59 or higher
npx playwright --version

# 3. Ensure playwright-cli skills are installed
playwright-cli install --skills

# 4. Session name — use -s=<output> for all playwright-cli calls this run
node -e "console.log('locators-' + Date.now())"

If playwright-cli is not found, install it by running these two commands separately (chaining with && can fail on Windows):

npm install -g @playwright/cli@latest
playwright-cli install --skills

Use the output from step 4 as your -s= value for every playwright-cli call this run.

Locator priority (both modes)

1. getByRole with accessible name
2. getByLabel
3. getByTestId data attributes
4. CSS selectors — last resort only

Never use auto-generated classes (e.g., ), positional selectors (), or exact text matches on dynamic content.