Why I Finally Ditched My Flaky Tests (Thanks to Playwright)

#playwright #career #testing #selenium

Tests passing locally but failing in CI... again? That was my life every week.
I'd re-run pipelines, blame "timing issues," waste hours debugging. My team started ignoring test failures because nobody trusted them.
Then I found this TestLeaf blog about Playwright that changed everything.
The Problem Nobody Talks About
Google reports a 1.5% flaky test rate. Even they deal with inconsistent tests.
The blog introduced the "Zero-Flake Contract"—four guarantees:

Determinism – same inputs = same results
Isolation – no shared state
Observability – debuggable artifacts
Environment parity – CI matches local

When I started to learn Playwright this way, everything changed.
What Actually Fixed My Tests
The Playwright automation tool isn't magic—it's the design.
Locator Strategy: User-facing locators (roles, labels) instead of fragile CSS selectors. No more breaking when developers change class names.
Auto-Waiting: Eliminated my flakiest bugs. No more sleep(3000) everywhere.
Trace Files: Download trace.zip and replay failures step-by-step. This alone saved dozens of debugging hours.

My First "Boring" Test
The blog recommended starting simple. My first test just verified a button was visible.
javascripttest('verify CTA', async ({ page }) => {
await page.goto('https://example.com');
await expect(page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Sign Up' })).toBeVisible();
});
That simple test validated my entire pipeline before I scaled.
What a Playwright Course Online Taught Me

Test isolation is non-negotiable
CI artifacts essential (trace: 'on-first-retry')
Page objects optional—abstract only when needed

Reliability comes from intent, not cleverness.
My CI Setup

HTML report (always)
Trace on retry
Screenshots/videos on failure
Parallel execution

Every failure answers: "What?" and "Why?"
The Truth
The Playwright automation tool gave me primitives. The Zero-Flake mindset made the difference.
Flaky tests? Check: determinism, isolation, observability, parity.

Credit to TestLeaf for the blog that saved my sanity.
What's your Playwright struggle? 🚀