Playwright E2E suites fail in two directions: they're flaky enough that teams disable them, or they're so under-configured (no sharding, no masking, no stable waits) that they're slow and noisy without adding confidence. This skill reviews Playwright-specific configuration -- fixtures, auth state, parallelism, and screenshot assertions -- against current official API behavior rather than remembered API shapes that may be stale across majors.
\nUse this skill when the user asks to:
\nstorageState, or auth setup,toHaveScreenshot visual-assertion options (maxDiffPixelRatio, mask, animations).Playwright's config shape, CLI flags, and assertion option names change across majors and are documented, not folklore -- never assert a flag, option, or \"best practice\" from memory.
\nToolSearch with query \"context7\" (or \"select:mcp__Context7__resolve-library-id,mcp__Context7__query-docs\") to load the Context7 tools if not already loaded in this session.mcp__Context7__resolve-library-id with library name Playwright to obtain the current Context7-compatible ID (/microsoft/playwright); prefer the resolved ID over guessing.mcp__Context7__query-docs for the specific claim in question -- e.g. \"toHaveScreenshot maxDiffPixelRatio and mask options\", \"shard CLI flag and blob reporter merge\", \"storageState project dependencies setup\" -- before stating it as fact. Do this per review, not once from a prior session's memory.official_docs for primary normative statements (exact CLI flags, exact config shape); use Context7 to ground and cross-check the claim before writing it into a finding.official_docs URLs and mark the claim documentation-based (Context7 unavailable) rather than presenting it as freshly verified.toHaveScreenshot options and CLI --shard syntax are stable but still verify against the project's package.json version, not assumption.animations: 'disabled' and explicit mask/stylePath for non-deterministic regions before recommending a looser maxDiffPixelRatio/maxDiffPixels/threshold -- widening tolerance first papers over the actual source of visual noise.storageState.json fixtures as sensitive: they must come from a dedicated test account, never a real user session, and should not be committed if they contain live tokens (see security notes below).--shard=N/M with a matrix strategy plus blob reporter and merge-reports) only after confirming the suite's actual wall-clock time in CI justifies the added job complexity and report-merge step; sharding without a merge step silently drops report coverage.dependencies pattern (a dedicated setup project producing storageState, consumed via dependencies: ['setup']) over ad hoc globalSetup for auth when the project already uses Playwright's project model; both are documented, but they compose differently with sharding and per-project storage state.fullyParallel (parallelizes tests within a single file, in addition to across files) with CI-level sharding (--shard, distributes files across separate CI jobs/machines) -- they solve different bottlenecks and a suite can need one, both, or neither.toHaveScreenshot config.Load these only when needed:
\nstorageState/auth fixtures, setup project dependencies, globalSetup, or handling of storageState.json/HAR files as sensitive artifacts.--shard, matrix CI strategy, blob-reporter merge, fullyParallel, or workers tuning.toHaveScreenshot/toMatchSnapshot options (animations, mask, maxDiffPixelRatio, maxDiffPixels, threshold, stylePath) or diagnosing visual-diff flakiness.Return, at minimum:
\nstorageState/HAR fixture reviewed.