Record and playback

Record a browser session with Playwright codegen, run it as a spec, and convert it to Gherkin with review.

What you'll learn

How automax record wraps Playwright codegen with your project's environment, test-id attribute and a logged-in pool user, what post-processing does, how recorded specs run, and how conversion to features stays reviewable.

The flow

Record

bun run automax record -p demo-shop -e staging --name checkout --user standard
bun run automax record -p demo-shop -e staging --name mobile-checkout --device "iPhone 15"
bun run automax record -p demo-shop -e staging --name api-capture --save-har

Under the hood AutoMax spawns npx playwright codegen with --target playwright-test, the environment's base URL, --test-id-attribute from the project, --load-storage for the leased user, and device, locale, timezone, geolocation and color-scheme options from the environment. context._enableRecorder is never used; only public Playwright surfaces are.

Post-processing

The generated spec is rewritten so it fits the project:

imports test and expect from @automax/core/test, so fixtures, screenshots and healing apply
absolute URLs on the environment origin become relative routes
the test is wrapped in test.describe with @recorded @ui @regression tags
a header comment records project, environment, user, device and Playwright version
CSS and XPath locators are flagged // automax:fragile for the reviewer

--no-post-process keeps the raw output.

Run recorded specs

bun run automax run -p demo-shop -e staging -l recorded -b chromium

recorded is a layer like the others; results ingest through the Playwright JSON reporter.

Convert to Gherkin

bun run automax record convert projects/demo-shop/recorded/checkout.spec.ts
bun run automax proposals list
bun run automax proposals accept <id>

The generator agent reuses existing steps first, adds steps only for unmatched actions, and never deletes the spec. See Agents.