Anyone can use Playwright to write and execute tests in the same sense that anyone can use a hammer and nails to build a house. But whether they should embark on these endeavors is a different matter.
Unless you have coding expertise, you probably won’t get very far in working with Playwright, at least not in isolation. With that said, someone who knows nothing about carpentry likely won’t have much success building a house.
With help from the right tools, however, non-developers can excel at validating software with help from Playwright. Doing so simply requires looking beyond Playwright itself.
Playwright was made for developers
More so than other major test automation frameworks like Selenium and Cypress, Playwright was designed and built first and foremost with software developers in mind. It wasn’t conceived for QA engineers who are accustomed to working via graphical interfaces and doing little coding beyond setting up tests.
To be sure, someone with limited development expertise can probably pull off the act of writing a simple Playwright test easily enough. But they’ll struggle to write the code necessary to locate elements, perform actions, define assertions, handle authentication and test different application states. They’ll also struggle to track tests, monitor results, deal with test flakiness, and keep tests updated when working with a large-scale test suite.
AI isn’t a solution
Of course, LLMs make it possible to write code without knowing how to code. AI chatbots and coding tools can generate much of the code necessary to write advanced Playwright tests.
But AI chatbots can’t solve other challenges surrounding test management, orchestration, and interpretation. Chatbots also can’t reliably do things like troubleshoot flaky tests or optimize test execution, especially without guidance from someone who actually understands how test code works.
Even in the AI era, Playwright remains a developer-oriented testing framework.
Extending Playwright for non-developers
This doesn’t mean that Playwright is strictly for developers. Non-developers can take full advantage of the framework, too, with the help of tools like Leapwork Play that complement Playwright itself.
Leapwork Play adds a structured, record-edit-run authoring experience and visual, reusable components around Playwright, making it easier for QA professionals to create, understand, debug, and maintain tests without doing everything directly in code. Developers can continue working with the framework they know, while teams can import existing Playwright tests and repositories instead of starting again.
With Play, using Playwright no longer means drowning in code. Play opens the door to an experience where every QA professional, even those who can’t or don’t want to get lost in code, can seamlessly take advantage of modern test automation.
