browser-automation

Browser Automation

Automate Google Chrome via playwright-cli (pw). Maintains a persistent Chrome profile at ~/.pw-agent/.playwright-profile/ so logins and cookies survive across sessions.

Prerequisites

• Node.js installed
• playwright-cli installed: npm install -g @playwright/cli
• Minimum version: 0.1.0 (check with playwright-cli --version)
• If playwright-cli is not found after install, the npm global bin may not be in PATH. Fix with:

  export PATH="$(npm root -g)/../bin:$PATH"
  

Setup

~/.pw-agent/ is the runtime home. It holds the pw launcher script and persistent Chrome state.

First-time setup

1. Create runtime directories:

   mkdir -p ~/.pw-agent/.playwright-profile ~/.pw-agent/.playwright-cli ~/.pw-agent/.playwright-mcp
   

2. Create a launcher script at ~/.pw-agent/pw:

   cat > ~/.pw-agent/pw << 'LAUNCHER'
   #!/usr/bin/env bash
   cd "$(dirname "$0")"
   # Ensure npm global bin is in PATH
   NPM_BIN="$(npm root -g 2>/dev/null)/../bin"
   [ -d "$NPM_BIN" ] && export PATH="$NPM_BIN:$PATH"
   exec playwright-cli "$@"
   LAUNCHER
   chmod +x ~/.pw-agent/pw
   

3. Seed the profile by opening a site:

   cd ~/.pw-agent && ./pw open https://example.com
   

   Log in to any services you need. Close the browser when done. The profile persists for future sessions.

CRITICAL: Never delete ~/.pw-agent/.playwright-profile/ — it contains saved logins and cookies. Re-setup should only recreate the launcher script and mkdir -p missing directories.

Usage

All commands run from ~/.pw-agent/:

cd ~/.pw-agent && ./pw open https://example.com
./pw snapshot        # Capture full DOM as YAML accessibility tree
./pw screenshot      # Capture viewport as PNG
./pw click e42       # Click element by ref ID
./pw fill e42 "text" # Fill form field
./pw press Enter     # Press keyboard key
./pw stop            # Close browser

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