Playwright MCP

What it does

• Operates on the accessibility tree — Claude clicks by role/label, not fragile CSS selectors
• Snapshot/ref-based workflow: take an a11y snapshot, locate an element by ref, click
• Tab management (new tab, select, list) + navigation (go, back, forward, reload)
• Form interaction: fill, type, select_option, check/uncheck, file upload
• Screenshot, console-log capture, and JavaScript evaluation in the page context

When to use it

Best for browser-based UI testing that needs to survive design changes (no selectors to break), filling SaaS forms without an API, and web scraping where the structure varies. Pairs naturally with Computer Use for layered automation — Playwright for stable flows, Computer Use as the fallback when the tree breaks.

Getting started

npx -y @playwright/mcp@latest

Add the entry to .mcp.json or ~/.claude.json under mcpServers.playwright. Optionally pass --browser (chromium / firefox / webkit / msedge) and --executable-path.

Things to know

Drives Chromium-family and WebKit by default — Firefox support needs --browser firefox but is less stable. Some sites with aggressive bot detection (Cloudflare, DataDome) will block the embedded browser; use a real-user-profile Chromium launch for those.