E2E Scaffold — Write the Plumbing Once, Reuse It Forever

Generating a full Playwright script from scratch for every test case burns tokens on setup that never changes. This skill scaffolds the reusable layer — config, fixtures, a smoke test — once per project. After that, new coverage is a few lines against existing fixtures/Page Objects, not a new script.

Pairs with coding-standards/qa/e2e-testing.md (RULE QA-E2E-01–05) if the standards system is installed — that file is the rule, this skill is the scaffold that makes following it the path of least resistance. Works standalone if standards aren't installed.

Self-improvement (do this first and last)

1. At start: read learnings.md in this skill's folder if it exists. Apply relevant lessons.
2. At end of every use: append one dated bullet — a stack this needed extra handling for, a detection heuristic that guessed wrong. Merge instead of duplicating.

Step 1 — Check whether the scaffold already exists

Look for playwright.config.ts/.js at the project root and a tests/e2e/fixtures.* file. If both exist, do not re-scaffold — read the existing fixtures.ts and any *.pom.ts files and extend them for whatever new coverage was asked for. Re-running this skill on a project that already has the layer is a bug, not idempotent setup.

Step 2 — Detect the stack

Read package.json (or the project's manifest) to determine:

• Dev command and default port (next dev → 3000, vite → 5173, astro dev → 4321, etc. — verify the actual configured port rather than assuming the framework default, since projects often override it)
• Package manager (npm/pnpm/yarn) from the lockfile present
• Whether @playwright/test is already a dependency

If @playwright/test is missing, tell the user what will be installed and why, then install it as a dev dependency — this is a package.json change and follows the same confirm-before-acting posture as any other dependency addition. Also ensure the Chromium browser binary is installed (playwright install chromium).

Step 3 — Write the scaffold

Create the three files in e2e-scaffold.templates.md (same skill folder), adapting the {{PORT}}/{{DEV_COMMAND}} placeholders to what Step 2 found. Keep the fixtures file to universal concerns only — no feature-specific selectors, no guessed Page Object methods. Feature coverage is written later, per Step 5.

Step 4 — Wire it up

• Add a "test:e2e": "playwright test" script to package.json.
• Add to .gitignore (create the block if absent):

  /test-results
  /playwright-report
  /blob-report
  /playwright/.cache
  

• If coding-standards/qa/e2e-testing.md is installed, it needs no edits — it already documents this layer. If the project has no coding-standards system, briefly note to the user that RULE QA-E2E-01–05's discipline (specs updated in the same commit as the behaviour they cover, never left stale-but-green) still applies even without the file.

Step 5 — Verify, then stop

Run test:e2e and confirm the smoke test passes before reporting done — an unverified scaffold is worse than none. Do not generate additional feature-specific specs at this point; that's the next request, done against the fixtures/POM layer just built, not a blind batch of guessed coverage (see QA-E2E-02/03 if the standard is installed).