Don't Automate Everything: Lessons from Playwright

I went heavy on Playwright early on. Wrote tests for every button and every form I could. It looked solid until a small UI change broke a dozen of them because I’d used getByText in bad spots. The suite became useless for a while, and we were shipping code without it (so what was the point of all that work?).

Now I focus on automating the things I don’t want to do manually: setup flows, core user paths, data checks. If I can’t explain why a test exists, I don’t write it. I also check UI mocks early so I’m not surprised when labels change or elements move. It saves time and keeps the suite stable.

Five solid tests are better than fifty flaky ones. Flaky tests destroy trust in QA fast. I treat tests like real code. I review them, refactor them, and make small commits. If you skip that, the suite turns into a mess quickly.

I use Playwright every day, but automation’s not about hitting numbers. It’s about saving time and keeping focus on users instead of fixing scripts constantly.

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