| name | playwright |
| description | Use when you need to scrape pages, extract structured data or interact with web interfaces via headless browser automation without using screenshots. |
| status | active |
| version | 1.1 |
Playwright
This skill also ships inside the Sovereign Ecosystem template.
Purpose: Browser automation via headless Chromium. Scrape pages, extract structured data, and interact with web interfaces. Returns clean JSON, not screenshots.
Token efficiency: approximately 200-500 tokens per page vs 20,000-30,000 for screenshot-based approaches.
When to Use
- Tech watch repo checks: retrieve changelogs, release notes, README updates from GitHub
- Scraping any page for structured data (pricing tables, product lists, article text)
- Checking if a URL loads and what it contains
- Extracting links, headings or specific content from a page
How to Use
The run.js script ships inside this plugin's scripts/ directory. Pass a URL argument and it returns JSON.
node "<path-to-plugin>/scripts/run.js" https://example.com
Replace <path-to-plugin> with the path where this plugin is installed in your environment. For plugin-based runtimes (Claude Code with IGOS), the script lives at:
plugins/playwright/scripts/run.js
Output format:
{
"url": "https://example.com",
"title": "Page title",
"text": "Cleaned body text...",
"links": [
{ "text": "Link text", "href": "https://..." }
]
}
Requirements
Playwright must be installed before first use. Run these once from the plugin's scripts/ directory:
npm install playwright --prefix "<path-to-plugin>/scripts"
npx playwright install chromium
Chromium binary installs to the node_modules/ directory inside scripts/. Add this path to your AI interface's ignore configuration so it does not appear in context reads.
Troubleshooting
- Empty text: If a page returns empty text, switch
waitUntil to networkidle and retry.
- Browser binary not found: Run
npx playwright install chromium from the scripts directory.
- Cloudflare blocking: Add
playwright-extra and puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth if a site blocks the script.
- Timeout: Increase all timeouts to 15 seconds and switch to
networkidle for slow pages.
- Always close the browser in a
finally block. This is already handled in run.js.
Invocation
Tell your AI interface what you need in plain English. Example prompts:
- "Scrape the changelog from github.com/[repo] and summarize what's new."
- "Check the releases page at [URL] and tell me what shipped since [date]."
- "Extract the pricing table from [URL] as a JSON array."
Your AI reads this SKILL.md, runs the script, and returns the data.
Pairs With
Researcher pairs naturally. Use Playwright for structured page extraction when web search tools return incomplete or truncated content.
Source Harvest often needs deep reads of external repos or documentation. Playwright handles pages that block standard fetch tools.
If Researcher isn't installed yet: Install Researcher via Infinite Game OS.
If Source Harvest isn't installed yet: Install Source Harvest via Infinite Game OS.
Model Routing
Dispatch the cheapest model that does the job well. Before each delegated step, ask whether a smaller model would produce equivalent output.
| Task type | Model |
|---|
| Script invocation, URL scrape, structured data extraction from clean JSON output | Haiku |
| Changelog or release-note summarization, multi-item synthesis with temporal filtering | Sonnet |
| Troubleshooting blocked or failed scrapes, multi-step diagnosis and option selection | Sonnet |
| Interpreting extracted data for a strategic decision | Opus |
Set the model explicitly on every subagent dispatch. Never silently inherit the top tier.
Refinements
(Empty. Populated when execution mistakes occur during sessions.)
