Skill: Run browser-driven web app example

Example: Browser-driven web app

You have a dev server that serves HTML to a browser. An agent in a headless container can't open a browser window — so "run the app" means launching the dev server, driving a headless Chromium against it, and producing a screenshot that proves the page rendered.

Don't write a browser driver. Use chromium-cli.

Dev server

Find the dev command (package.json scripts.dev, Makefile, README), start it in the background, and wait for it to actually serve:

npm run dev &   # or yarn dev, pnpm dev, make serve, ./dev.sh
echo $! > /tmp/dev.pid
timeout 30 bash -c 'until curl -sf http://localhost:3000 >/dev/null; do sleep 1; done'

Don't sleep 5 — poll the port. Stop with kill $(cat /tmp/dev.pid) (or pkill -f 'npm run dev') before relaunching, or the next run hits EADDRINUSE.

Drive

chromium-cli is a headless-Chromium REPL. Pipe a script to stdin:

chromium-cli --session app <<'EOF'
nav http://localhost:3000
wait-for text=Dashboard
screenshot
click button:has-text("New item")
fill input[name="title"] Smoke test
press Enter
wait-for text=Smoke test
screenshot
console --errors
EOF

Screenshots land in chromium_cli/sessions/app/screenshots/ (latest symlinked as screenshot.png). That's the whole loop: nav → wait-for the element you need → act (click / fill / type / press) → screenshot → console --errors to check nothing threw. Full command reference: chromium-cli skill, or help at the prompt.

For iterative debugging, run it under tmux and send-keys one command at a time — same commands, same session.

If chromium-cli isn't available: adapt electron.md's REPL driver — the structure and commands transfer, but it's _electron-specific: import { chromium } instead, launch with chromium.launch({ args: ['--no-sandbox'] }), acquire the page via (await app.newContext()).newPage() then goto() your dev URL, and drop the Electron-only window introspection (.windows()/.firstWindow()/the windows command).

What to put in the skill

The project-specific bits only. chromium-cli handles the mechanics.

• Dev command + port + stop. The exact start line, any env vars it needs, and the kill/pkill to stop it.
• Auth. Whatever gets a logged-in session — a set-cookie line, a fill/click login sequence, or a helper script that does the API dance and emits the cookie.
• One representative interaction. Not the whole app — one path that proves it's running, ending in a screenshot.
• App-specific gotchas. Only the ones you actually hit.

Gotchas that recur

• React controlled inputs. eval el.value = '…' doesn't fire React's onChange. Use fill / type — they go through Playwright's input pipeline.
• Websockets / long-poll. wait-idle never settles. wait-for the element you actually need.
• Slow first paint. Vite/Next compile routes on demand; the first nav can take 10s+. wait-for handles it; raw sleep doesn't.
• screenshot-element <sel> crops to one element — use it when the diff is in a specific component, not the whole page.
• Check console --errors before declaring success. A page can render its shell while every data fetch 500s.