I Used Playwright to Give an Air Traffic Control Simulator a Voice

Sobhit Sharma — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 07:46:51 +0000

What if Playwright could do more than test a website?

I wanted to find out.

I built ATC-ClearCast, a Python companion for ATC-SIM, a browser-based air traffic control simulator. It observes in-game browser events and turns them into spoken ATC-style communications, with live flight progress strips displayed in the terminal.

The idea

Instead of interacting with the browser only to validate UI elements, I used Playwright as a bridge between the browser and a separate Python application.

The project brings together:

Playwright for browser instrumentation and event capture
Python for processing simulator updates
ATC phraseology logic for generating spoken-style communications
Text-to-speech for audio output
Terminal UI for displaying flight progress strips

Why build this?

Because sometimes the most interesting projects happen when you use familiar tools for something they weren't originally designed to do.

As a QA engineer, I spend a lot of time thinking about browser automation, test reliability, and system behavior. This project was an opportunity to explore those same skills in a more playful way.

Watch it in action

YouTube demo: https://youtu.be/mAKjQjPpEd4

Source code: https://github.com/guardianofquality/atc-clearcast

Longer technical write-up: https://medium.com/@shobitsharma/beyond-testing-how-i-used-playwright-to-turn-a-silent-browser-game-into-an-icao-compliant-spoken-9e016cd26e00

This is a hobby project for simulation and experimentation, not a real-world air traffic control system.

I'd love to hear about other unexpected things you've built with Playwright or browser automation.

DEV Community: Sobhit Sharma

I Used Playwright to Give an Air Traffic Control Simulator a Voice