End-to-end testing patterns with Playwright — page objects, AI agent testing, visual regression, accessibility testing with axe-core, and CI integration. Use when writing E2E tests, setting up Playwright, implementing visual regression, or testing accessibility.
Install with Codex or Claude Copy this prompt, paste it into Codex, Claude, or another assistant, and let it review the skill page and install it for you.
A direct command skips the review prompt. Inspect the source before running it.
End-to-end testing patterns with Playwright — page objects, AI agent testing, visual regression, accessibility testing with axe-core, and CI integration. Use when writing E2E tests, setting up Playwright, implementing visual regression, or testing accessibility.
Playwright, axe-core and jest-axe document themselves. This skill carries only the
OrchestKit delta (references/ork-delta.md) plus the house subsets in rules/. Fetch
the vendor page for anything below instead of expecting it here.
WCAG 2.2 success criteria and the manual keyboard / screen-reader / contrast / zoom
passes are NOT routed away: checklists/a11y-testing-checklist.md still carries them
in full, with https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/quickref/ as the normative reference.
emulate Backends
For E2E tests that interact with external APIs (GitHub, Vercel, Google), use emulate as the backend instead of hitting real APIs. This eliminates flakiness from rate limits, network issues, and non-deterministic data.
Approach
Result
emulate backends (FIRST CHOICE)
Deterministic, fast, CI-friendly
Real APIs
Flaky, rate-limited, slow
MSW/Nock intercepts
No state machines, manual response management
Key features: seed config for reproducible data, per-worker port isolation for parallel Playwright, full state machine transitions.
See rules/emulate-e2e.md for patterns, CI configuration, and per-worker isolation fixtures.
Playwright 1.59+ AI agent framework for test planning, generation, and self-healing. Includes a token-efficient CLI mode designed for coding agents — minimal output, structured responses, reduced context overhead.
Rule
File
Key Pattern
AI Agents
rules/e2e-ai-agents.md
Planner, Generator, Healer workflow
npx playwright init-agents --loop=claude # For Claude Code
Token-efficient CLI mode (1.58+): Playwright ships a SKILL-focused CLI mode that produces compact, agent-friendly output — use this when running Playwright from AI agents to minimize token consumption.
New in Playwright 1.59 (Apr 2026) — relevant for AI agents:
page.screencast({ start, stop, showActions }) — unified video + real-time JPEG frame streaming. Lets a Healer agent read frames mid-run for visual assertion without writing video files.
browser.bind() / npx playwright-cli attach — attach to a running browser from an MCP client mid-test; useful for Healer to inspect a hung or failing CI run.
locator.normalize() — rewrites a brittle locator to best-practice equivalents. Pair with Healer to auto-upgrade getByTestId → getByRole where possible.
Accessibility (Playwright)
Full-page accessibility validation with axe-core in E2E tests.
House rules that the vendor docs do not state (CI-only baselines, single snapshot
project, mask over threshold): references/ork-delta.md. Option reference and the
baseline workflow itself: see the Upstream coverage table above.
Key Decisions
Decision
Recommendation
E2E framework
Playwright 1.59+ with semantic locators
Locator strategy
getByRole > getByLabel > getByTestId
Browser
Chromium (Chrome for Testing in 1.59+)
Page pattern
Page Object Model for complex pages
Visual regression
Playwright native toHaveScreenshot()
A11y testing
axe-core (E2E) + jest-axe (unit)
CI retries
2-3 in CI, 0 locally
Flaky detection
failOnFlakyTests: true in CI
AI agents
Planner/Generator/Healer via init-agents
Type safety
tRPC for end-to-end, Zod for runtime validation
References
Resource
Description
references/ork-delta.md
House rules the vendor docs do not state: jest-axe over vitest-axe, CLI-only agent init, CI-only baselines, single snapshot project, mask over threshold
Generic Playwright samples (user flows, auth fixtures, API mocking, multi-tab, file
upload, axe scans) now come from the vendor pages in the Upstream coverage table.
Scripts
Script
Description
scripts/create-page-object.md
Generate Playwright page object with auto-detected patterns
Related Skills
testing-unit - Unit testing patterns with mocking, fixtures, and data factories
testing-integration - API boundary and contract testing
cover - Generates the E2E tier when the suite does not exist yet
verify - Grades an existing suite and returns a merge verdict
expect - Diff-aware browser verification via agent-browser
emulate-seed - Seed configuration authoring for emulate providers
portless (upstream) - Stable HTTPS baseURL for local E2E tests (https://myapp.localhost instead of port guessing; HTTPS-on-443 default since portless 0.10)
