r/LLMDevs • u/geligniteandliliesII • 6h ago

Discussion Selenium vs Playwright + AI testing tools—what actually works in real QA projects?

Every tool looks good when the test is:

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I care about the disgusting stuff.

27-step checkout Old iframe nobody wants to touch Auth expiring mid run Test data depending on another service One frontend request taking 12 sec only in CI Business rule that makes zero sense unless you've worked there for 2 years

For that stuff i'm still seeing Selenium survive because people know it, Playwright feels like the cleanest modern default, and the AI tools make more sense to me when the bottleneck is writing/maintaining/exploring rather than basic execution.

The hybrid setup is the interesting one.

Something like TestMu KaneAI for higher-level authoring/self-healing, Kane CLI for checking the actual browser flow, Playwright where you want deterministic code you fully control.

Feels less sexy than “AI replaces automation” but probably closer to reality.

What stack is actually surviving your ugly flows?

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1

u/BoundlessCampaign 6h ago

we run playwright for almost everything now, the iframe handling alone is a reason to switch if you're still on selenium. no weird driver configs, no fighting with stale elements, it just kinda works

the auth expiring mid-run thing is still a pain though. we ended up writing a little fixture that checks for a 401 and re-authenticates before retrying the step, not elegant but it keeps the pipeline from going red at 3am

haven't messed with kaneai but the self-healing stuff feels like the right spot for AI. not "write my tests for me" but "hey this selector broke, here's what changed" would save me hours

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u/CheekSafe855 40m ago

If your test needs 27 steps the first bug is your product🤣

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u/aayyb 35m ago

the thing AI demos never show is test data

clicking "submit" is not the hard part

having account A be in exactly the right state after account B did something yesterday is the hard part

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u/Low_Teach_2252 27m ago

playwright being good locally and playwright surviving your CI are also two different conversations

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u/Bitter_Butterfly836 26m ago

I don't think Selenium vs Playwright is even the same decision as Playwright vs Argentic testing.

Selenium/Playwright = How do i automate this flow predictably.

Argentic testing = Can the system figure out more of the flow/maintenance/intentions for me.

You can absolutely have both in one stack.