playwright

Installs the Playwright CLI, downloads the browser engines you ask for, and installs the operating-system libraries those browsers need, so a project’s browser tests run on the workstation with no further setup:

devtools:
  - name: nodejs
    version: "24"
  - name: playwright
    config:
      browsers: [chromium, firefox]

Omit config and you get Chromium. Declare nodejs first to choose the Node the CLI runs on; otherwise the distribution’s Node is installed for it.

config fields

Version behavior

Where the browsers live

Engines are installed once, as root, into a shared cache at /opt/ms-playwright, made world-readable, and every login shell gets PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH pointing at it. So the workstation user’s test runs find the same browsers the install produced, which a per-user npx playwright install cannot give you.

On Debian and Ubuntu the browsers’ system libraries are installed too. On Alpine only the engines are installed; the dependency step is skipped.

Example

A test workstation that runs a project’s browser suite:

apiVersion: workstations.ringleader.dev/v1
kind: WorkstationConfig
metadata:
  name: e2e-box
  namespace: local
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      role: e2e
  identity:
    user: dev
    shell: /bin/bash
  packages:
    - git
  devtools:
    - name: nodejs
      version: "24"
    - name: playwright
      config:
        browsers: [chromium, firefox]
  sources:
    - name: app
      git:
        url: https://github.com/acme/app.git
        ref: main
      path: /home/dev/src/app
  scripts:
    - name: install-deps
      phase: user
      runPolicy: onChange
      content: |
        set -e
        cd ~/src/app && npm ci

Notes

• The first setup run is slow: browser downloads take minutes. Keep playwright off workstations that do not need it.
• Changing browsers re-runs the recipe, but playwright install skips engines that are already present, so adding webkit to an existing workstation downloads only WebKit.