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Anti-Patterns

When to Use

As a checklist before committing a Playwright config or sharing a report.

Wrong vs Right

  • Wrong: opening index.html via file:// → Right: show-report or any HTTP server
  • Wrong: committing playwright-report/ to git → Right: .gitignore it
  • Wrong: assuming reports auto-archive across runs → Right: every run overwrites; copy/zip if you want archives
  • Wrong: trace: 'on' in CI → Right: 'on-first-retry' keeps disk under control
  • Wrong: triage from terminal output → Right: open the report; the slider is the triage tool
  • Wrong: bulk --update-snapshots after seeing red → Right: scoped --update-snapshots --grep "<title>"
  • Wrong: attachmentsBaseURL: 'https://cdn.example.com/runs/123' (no trailing slash) → Right: trailing slash always
  • Wrong: extracting trace.zip before opening → Right: keep zip intact; viewer expects archive
  • Wrong: host: 'localhost' inside DDEV → Right: 0.0.0.0 so the host can reach
  • Wrong: missing if: always() on artifact upload → Right: always upload; failures are the runs you most need to triage
  • Wrong: playwright-report/ and test-results/ confusion → Right: report has the SPA + bundled attachments; test-results has raw per-test artifacts; report is what you ship
  • Wrong: using only list reporter and skipping html → Right: always include html; combine with others

See Also