Playwright Browser Automation

Control browsers via Playwright MCP server.

When to Use

• Web scraping and data extraction
• Taking screenshots of web pages
• Interacting with web UIs (clicking, typing, navigating)
• Testing web applications
• Automating browser-based workflows
• Filling forms and submitting data

Setup

MCP server configured in ~/.mcp.json:

{
  "playwright": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["-y", "@anthropic-ai/mcp-server-playwright"]
  }
}

Common Tools

Navigation

• navigate_page – Go to a URL
• new_page – Open new browser tab
• list_pages – Show open pages

Interaction

• click – Click elements
• fill – Type into input fields
• select – Choose from dropdowns
• press – Press keyboard keys

Capture

• take_screenshot – Screenshot current page
• get_page_content – Get page HTML
• get_text – Extract visible text

Evaluation

• evaluate – Run JavaScript in page context

Example Workflows

Screenshot a Page

1. navigate_page(url="https://example.com")
2. take_screenshot()

Fill a Form

1. navigate_page(url="https://example.com/form")
2. fill(selector="#email", value="user@example.com")
3. fill(selector="#password", value="secret")
4. click(selector="button[type=submit]")

Extract Data

1. navigate_page(url="https://example.com/data")
2. get_text(selector=".results")

Tips

• Use CSS selectors or XPath for element targeting
• Wait for page loads before interacting
• Browser runs headless by default
• Screenshots are useful for debugging