Browser Automation with playwright-cli
Quick start
# open new browser
playwright-cli open
# navigate to a page
playwright-cli goto https://playwright.dev
# interact with the page using refs from the snapshot
playwright-cli click e15
playwright-cli type "page.click"
playwright-cli press Enter
# take a screenshot (rarely used, as snapshot is more common)
playwright-cli screenshot
# close the browser
playwright-cli close
How interaction refs work
After every command, playwright-cli emits a snapshot file (.playwright-cli/page-*.yml). Element refs (e3, e7, e15) come from that snapshot — read it before the next interactive command. Use playwright-cli snapshot to refresh on demand.
> playwright-cli goto https://example.com
### Page
- Page URL: https://example.com/
- Page Title: Example Domain
### Snapshot
[Snapshot](.playwright-cli/page-2026-02-14T19-22-42-679Z.yml)
If --filename is not provided, a new snapshot file is created with a timestamp. Default to automatic file naming; use --filename= when the artifact is part of the workflow result.
Local installation fallback
If running globally-available playwright-cli fails, prefix with npx:
npx playwright-cli open https://example.com
npx playwright-cli click e1
Browser sessions
Use -s=<name> to run multiple parallel sessions:
playwright-cli -s=mysession open example.com --persistent
playwright-cli -s=mysession click e6
playwright-cli -s=mysession close
playwright-cli list # list active sessions
playwright-cli close-all # close every browser
Command reference
Full surface — core, navigation, keyboard, mouse, save-as, tabs, storage (cookies / localStorage / sessionStorage), network, devtools, open parameters, snapshots, browser sessions, end-to-end examples — is in references/commands.md.
Specific tasks
- Request mocking — references/request-mocking.md
- Running Playwright code — references/running-code.md
- Browser session management — references/session-management.md
- Storage state (cookies, localStorage) — references/storage-state.md
- Test generation — references/test-generation.md
- Tracing — references/tracing.md
- Video recording — references/video-recording.md