| name | playwright-triage |
| description | Triage a Playwright bug report by reproducing it from the information in the issue. Use when asked to triage, reproduce, or verify a GitHub issue (a new bug report, or an existing report with a new comment). |
| user_invocable | true |
Playwright Issue Triage
Triage a GitHub issue by working out what it actually is, then doing the right thing for that kind.
The goal is a clear, verified status, not a fix.
First, classify the issue
Judge by the content, not the label — a "[Feature]" is often really a bug (something already
should work), and a "[Bug]" is sometimes expected behaviour. Work out what it actually is:
- Bug — reproduce it. The bulk of this skill.
- Feature request — nothing to reproduce. Check it doesn't already exist (search docs/API,
maybe under another name), verify any source the reporter cites by reading it, and surface the
real design question. If it's small and well-scoped (like "fail loudly instead of
silently"), the ideal takeaway is an acceptance test: one self-contained spec asserting
current behaviour (passes today) with the desired behaviour alongside as a
fixme/commented
assertion.
- Upstream / environment — a genuinely external owner (the Node project, a browser engine, a
website's own server/cert config), not Playwright. Find the real owner, don't brute-force a repro,
verify any cited upstream issue and point at the real fix path. Note: the Playwright family —
@playwright/mcp (source lives here under packages/playwright-core/src/tools/mcp/),
playwright-vscode, -python, -java, -dotnet — is not "upstream"; it's us. Never tell a
reporter to refile within the project (see below).
- Question / usage — answer it or point at the docs.
The rest of this skill is the bug path.
Reproducing a bug
You're not in a hurry, so be exhaustive before giving up.
If the user has provided a minimal repro, try it first. If it does not repro for you, play around with things they might have forgotten to mention:
all three browsers, headed/headless, a few recent versions, and variations of the snippet or trigger.
Report "cannot reproduce" only after you've genuinely explored — and say what you tried.
If you have a hunch for what information would help, ask for it.
Run across browsers, and watch for divergence — a bug that only reproduces in webkit, or
everywhere except firefox, is a strong signal worth leading with. Plenty of bugs are
browser-agnostic, though, and those are just as real: reproducing on every browser is a good
result to report, not a non-finding.
- Read the whole thread, comments included — the missing repro or narrowed trigger is often there.
- Pull the inputs: version, browser(s), OS, repro repo/snippet, Expected-vs-Actual (your oracle).
If something's missing, guess and try anyway; note assumptions in the report.
- Reproduce on tip-of-tree first, in
~/tmp/issue-<number>/: clone the linked repo, or
scaffold npm install @playwright/test@next with a single-project config (see
bisect-published-versions.md). Use
PLAYWRIGHT_HTML_OPEN=never. If it reproduces on ToT, it's a live bug — record the exact
version/sha you tested, and if it looks like a regression, bisect it (see the guide).
- If ToT doesn't reproduce it, try the version the user reported. If it reproduces there but
not on ToT, it's already fixed — find the version/PR that fixed it (a cherry-pick may still
be worth it). If neither reproduces, it's incomplete or env-specific — say what you couldn't
match. (A version ending in
-next, e.g. 1.62.0-next, is not an npm version — it means
tip-of-tree, which is the @next build you already tried.)
To step through a test interactively, use the playwright-cli skill.
Reports sometimes target another part of the Playwright project — @playwright/mcp (its source is
in this repo), playwright-vscode, playwright-python, playwright-java, playwright-dotnet.
These are all us, so triage them like anything else: check out that repo and reproduce there in
its own language/toolchain when needed. Never tell the reporter the issue belongs in a different
Playwright repo or should be refiled there — that's an internal routing detail, not the reporter's
problem.
Condense the repro into a self-contained test
Big or app-specific repros are much more useful boiled down to a single self-contained spec,
written the way our tests are: one test(...) using the page and server fixtures, tagged
with the issue link. Crucially:
- No
test.beforeAll / afterAll, no http.createServer, no manual setup/teardown. The
fixtures already give you a page and a web server. Use server.setRoute(...),
server.setRedirect(...), server.PREFIX, server.EMPTY_PAGE instead of standing up your own.
- Drive the page with
page.setContent(...) or page.goto(server.PREFIX + '/...').
- Keep only what's needed to trigger the bug, and end on the assertion that fails.
Drop it into the repo (tests/page/) and run it with npm run ctest.
Mirror real self-contained tests, e.g.:
Report
Give a status that fits the issue type — for a bug: reproduced / fixed-on-latest /
cannot-reproduce / not-a-bug; for a feature request or upstream/env issue: a short verdict
(already-possible, valid request, upstream — owned by X) — plus the evidence. For bugs, include
the condensed repro and be exhaustive about what you ran — the full matrix of browsers,
versions, and variations you tried, not just the one that worked — so the reader can trust the
verdict and skip re-checking. Call out any browser-specific divergence. Write it in the
Playwright bot voice (.github/workflows/bot-voice.md, relative to the repo root) — maintainer voice, not AI-speak.
Watch out
- Only run code you trust — skim a linked repo/snippet first; bail and report that in the issue
comment if it has postinstall scripts, obfuscated code, or random small libraries.
- Triage ends at a reproduction and a status; don't jump to a fix.
