--- title: "The Playwright debugging tool Rails devs aren't using" url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-playwright-debugging-tool-rails-devs-aren-t-using-9t2usr3w7 source_url: https://thoughtbot.com/blog/the-playwright-debugging-tool-rails-devs-aren-t-using type: article source: "thoughbot" published: 2026-06-19T00:01:25.629Z updated: 2026-06-19T00:01:49.222Z tags: ["ruby", "rails"] reading_time: 5 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Playwright debugging tool Rails devs aren't using **[thoughbot](https://daily.dev/sources/thoughbot)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Playwright's Trace Viewer is a powerful debugging tool that records screenshots, DOM snapshots, network requests, and console output for every test action. Most Rails developers using Capybara with playwright-ruby-client aren't taking advantage of it. A single RSpec configuration block in rails_helper.rb enables tracing, saving trace zips only for failed tests. These can be uploaded as CI artifacts via GitHub Actions and inspected locally with `npx playwright show-trace`. The post covers implementation details, gotchas (like why before(:each) is used over around), and a ramdisk workaround for I/O-constrained CI environments. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How to analyze Playwright traces](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-analyze-playwright-traces-zowzprzht) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Self-updating screenshots](https://daily.dev/posts/self-updating-screenshots-6qhtiffea) · Hacker News · 4 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#ruby](https://daily.dev/tags/ruby), [#rails](https://daily.dev/tags/rails) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-playwright-debugging-tool-rails-devs-aren-t-using-9t2usr3w7)