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Playwright trace viewer completely changed how I debug failing CI tests

Ajitesh Mohanta
Ajitesh MohantaAmbassador
May 16, 2026 2,194 0
Before trace viewer, debugging a CI failure meant adding `console.log`, pushing, waiting 8 minutes for CI, repeat. Miserable. Now our CI uploads traces on failure and I can: - Scrub through every action with exact timestamps - See the DOM snapshot at each step - Inspect network requests that fired during the test - Check console errors that didn't surface in the test output Setup is two lines in `playwright.config.ts`: ```typescript use: { trace: 'on-first-retry', } ``` And in CI (GitHub Actions) we upload the artifact: ```yaml - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4 if: failure() with: name: playwright-traces path: test-results/ ``` The thing that surprised me most: you can open traces directly at `trace.playwright.dev` without installing anything. If you're not using this, start today.

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Playwright trace viewer completely changed how I debug failing CI tests — Community | QABash