📺 Session monitoring

See what your agents are doing — live.

npm i -g @playwright/cli@latest
playwright-cli show

Run this to open a dashboard that tiles all running browser sessions with real-time screencasts.

Click into any session to take full remote control — navigate, click, type — then press Escape to hand it back to the agent. Close sessions or clean up data right from the grid.

NOTE: You might need to restart your sessions using the fresh version of Playwright CLI for monitoring to be available!

Bugfix

• fixing tracing start/stop #230

🕶️ Incognito by default

Browser profiles are now in-memory by default — every session starts clean with no leftover state.

Use --persistent to opt into a persistent profile, or --profile=<path> to specify a custom profile directory:

> playwright-cli open example.com                       # incognito, clean slate
> playwright-cli open example.com --persistent          # persistent profile
> playwright-cli open example.com --profile=./my-data   # custom profile directory

🔀 Simplified session management

The --session flag has been replaced with the shorter -s=. Session lifecycle is simplified — there is no longer a "stopped" state; sessions are either running or gone.

> playwright-cli -s=myapp open example.com
> playwright-cli -s=myapp click e5
> playwright-cli -s=myapp close
> playwright-cli -s=myapp delete-data

New session management commands replace the old session-* family:

> playwright-cli list        # list all sessions
> playwright-cli close-all   # close all browsers
> playwright-cli kill-all    # forcefully kill all browser processes

🏗️ Workspace-scoped daemon

Each workspace now gets its own daemon process, preventing cross-project interference and enabling direct daemon startup for faster, more reliable operation.

Infrastructure for Playwright CLI is in, so we are ready to cook the features and skills!

⚡ Lightning-fast Playwright CLI executable (http://github.com/microsoft/playwright-cli)

> playwright-cli open example.com
> time playwright-cli snapshot
0.03s user 0.01s system cpu 0.055 total

🎥 On-demand video recording

> playwright-cli video-start
> playwright-cli open playwright.dev
> playwright-cli video-stop
### Result
- [Video](.playwright-cli/video-2026-01-31T00-49-47-976Z.webm)

Also available with the --caps=devtools flag in Playwright MCP.

🔧 Persistent session configuration

> playwright-cli config --headed --config=config.json
> playwright-cli open playwright.dev

Countless configuration options

☁️ Isolated (ephemeral) browser context, non-chromium browser shortcuts

> playwright-cli install --browser=firefox
> playwright-cli config --isolated --browser=firefox --headed
> playwright-cli open playwright.dev 

🔌 Playwright Chrome extension + Playwright CLI = ❤️

• Install Playwright browser extension

> playwright-cli --session=real-browser snapshot --extension

Share the tab and have fun!