Driving a Real Browser with Playwright

Claude Code already searches the web and reads pages on its own — that is the default for looking things up.

Playwright is different: it drives a real browser that can click, scroll, screenshot, and test. You reach for it in three cases — testing your own site, viewing something in a real visible browser, or reaching a page that blocks simple reads.

Install Playwright and the Chromium browser for it, and explain why Chromium rather than my everyday Chrome.

Chromium is the open, automation-friendly browser Playwright drives; keeping it separate leaves your normal browser untouched.

Headless means the browser runs invisibly in the background — fast, good for automated checks. Headed means a real browser window opens on your screen, so you watch it work.

With your dev server running, take a screenshot the invisible way.

Use Playwright to open my local site and take a screenshot, headless.

You get an image of your running site, captured by the browser with no window opening.

Now open my site in headed mode so I can watch the browser.

A window opens and drives itself. This visible mode also matters because some websites block invisible, bot-like browsers — running headed can get through where headless is stopped.

Remind me when to use built-in web search versus Playwright.

The answer: native search and fetch for reading and researching; Playwright only for testing your build, watching a real browser, or getting past a block. Do not let the powerful tool crowd out the simple one.