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December 5, 2025

Playwright and Playwright MCP

End-to-end testing with Playwright and AI-powered visual testing with Playwright MCP.

Posted by

EW

Eelco Wiersma

@eelcodotdev

Both TanStack Start and Next.js starter kits now come with a fully configured Playwright testing setup out of the box. This release brings comprehensive end-to-end testing capabilities and AI-powered visual testing through Playwright MCP.

What's new?

Playwright E2E Testing Setup

Both TanStack Start and Next.js starter kits now come with a fully configured Playwright testing setup out of the box. This includes:

• Pre-configured test environment - Ready-to-use Playwright config with sensible defaults
• Example test suites - Sample tests to get you started with best practices
• CI/CD integration - GitHub Actions workflow for running tests on every commit
• Multiple browser support - Test across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit
• Screenshots - Automatic capture on test failures for debugging
• Parallel test execution - Fast test runs with built-in parallelization

Getting started is as simple as running npm run test:e2e to launch your test suite. The setup handles authentication flows, page navigation, form interactions, and visual regression testing right out of the gate.

Playwright MCP - Giving AI Eyes

Playwright MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a game-changer for AI-assisted development. It literally gives AI assistants like Claude the ability to "see" and interact with your web application in real-time.

How it works:

Playwright MCP provides AI assistants with the ability to:

• Launch and control browsers - Spin up browser instances and navigate your application
• Take screenshots - Capture visual state of any page or component
• Interact with elements - Click buttons, fill forms, and perform user actions
• Analyze accessibility - Check ARIA labels, roles, and semantic HTML
• Validate responsive design - Test across different viewport sizes
• Read the DOM - Understand page structure and content

Why this matters for UI development:

Traditional AI assistance is limited to code - it can read your JSX/TSX but can't see what actually renders. With Playwright MCP, AI can:

1. Verify implementations visually - See if your code produces the intended UI
2. Catch visual bugs - Spot layout issues, styling problems, and responsive breakpoints
3. Improve accessibility - Analyze the rendered output for accessibility issues
4. Write better tests - Generate accurate selectors based on what it actually sees
5. Debug faster - Take screenshots at failure points to understand what went wrong
6. Validate cross-browser compatibility - Test across different browsers and devices

This dramatically improves the quality and accuracy of UI-related tasks. Instead of guessing whether a component looks right, AI can now verify it visually, just like a human QA engineer would.

Getting Started

To use Playwright MCP with Claude Code, install the Playwright MCP server:

claude mcp add playwright npx @playwright/mcp@latest

Now your AI assistant can visually verify every UI change it makes, ensuring pixel-perfect implementations and catching issues before they reach production.