00 Start here

Goal

Understand how this course works, what we skip, and how to practice with the Movies app and Playwright.

Before you run tests

Browse the live demo app anytime. To run Playwright yourself, clone the repository and run:

git clone https://github.com/debs-obrien/playwright-movies-app.git
cd playwright-movies-app
npm install
npx playwright install chromium
cp .env.example .env

The mock API accepts any username and password in .env.

Read first

• Playwright intro
• Course home for the full agenda

How we teach

1. Official docs own concepts (locators, assertions, config theory).
2. Modules here apply those ideas to the Movies app and mock API.
3. Each module has a goal, short examples on the page, and key takeaways.
4. Concepts stay on playwright.dev. This site is the practice guide.

We do not rewrite playwright.dev. We do not teach Codegen or an IDE Testing sidebar as the course path.

Working with a coding agent (optional)

If you use Cursor, Claude Code, or similar on a local clone, invoke the learn-lab-coach skill and name the module (for example, "I'm on 01"). The agent can run commands and open source files for you. That workflow is optional; you can follow these pages on your own too.

When writing or fixing tests in an agent, use the movies-playwright skill plus official playwright-cli and playwright-trace skills from the repo.

Tooling reference

Task	Command
App + mock (local)	npm run dev
Run tests	npx playwright test
Interactive debug	npx playwright test --ui
Explore the app	npx playwright cli
Live demo (no install)	Movies app on GitHub Pages

Ports 3000 (app) and 4000 (mock API) must be free locally, or let Playwright webServer start them during test runs. Keep npm run dev running while you explore with npx playwright cli; test runs do not require a separate npm run dev when webServer is configured.

Done when

• You have a local clone with npm install, Chromium installed, and .env from .env.example.
• You opened the course home and picked a path.

Key takeaways

• Pick a path on the course home (beginner, intermediate, or AI-first).
• Clone the repo when you want to run tests or edit specs.
• Full source for tests and the app is on GitHub.

Next: 01 Overview.