E2E Testing

Paragon generates and runs Playwright tests from plain English. Describe what you want to test, and Paragon handles the rest.

Quick Start

Just tell Paragon what to test:

Test the checkout flow with an expired credit card

Paragon writes the Playwright test, runs it, and opens an HTML report with video recordings and tracing so you can see exactly what happened.

How It Works

Describe the test in natural language
Paragon generates Playwright tests and saves a scenario to paragon.json
View results with video recordings, tracing, and screenshots

Tests run on your actual machine with your real environment variables, secrets, and local services.

Running Saved Tests

Once a scenario is saved, run it anytime:

Method	How
CLI	`paragon tests run <scenario-id>`
Chat	”run my e2e tests”
TUI	`ctrl+p` → Automation Scenarios

`paragon test`

Run exported Playwright E2E tests locally from the terminal. This command wraps npx playwright test with your paragon-tests/ configuration and handles authentication with Polarity for AI-powered test steps.

paragon test [file-pattern] [flags]

Prerequisites

Before running paragon test, make sure:

You’re authenticated — run paragon auth login if you haven’t already. AI-powered test steps require a valid Polarity session.
You have a paragon-tests/ directory in your project root containing a playwright.config.ts. Export your tests from the Paragon Dashboard to generate this directory.
Playwright is available — the command runs via npx, so Playwright will be resolved from your project’s node_modules or fetched automatically.

If the paragon-tests/ directory or playwright.config.ts is missing, the command will exit with an error and point you to the dashboard to export your tests.

Basic Usage

# Run all tests in paragon-tests/
paragon test

# Run a specific test file
paragon test login.spec.ts

# Run multiple files or use glob patterns
paragon test auth.spec.ts checkout.spec.ts
paragon test **/*.spec.ts

The optional [file-pattern] argument accepts one or more file paths or glob patterns. When omitted, all tests in the paragon-tests/ directory are run.

Flags

Flag	Type	Default	Description
`--url`	`string`	—	Base URL for tests. Sets the `PARAGON_TEST_URL` environment variable, overriding the URL configured in `playwright.config.ts`. Also overridable via the `PARAGON_TEST_URL` env var directly.
`--headed`	`bool`	`false`	Run tests with a visible browser window instead of headless mode. Useful for watching tests execute in real time.
`--grep`	`string`	—	Filter tests by name or pattern. Only tests whose name matches the pattern will run. Passed directly to Playwright’s `--grep` flag.
`--workers`	`int`	`0` (auto)	Number of parallel worker processes. When set to `0`, Playwright chooses automatically. Set to `1` to run tests sequentially.
`--retries`	`int`	`0`	Number of times to retry failed tests. Useful for flaky tests or unstable environments.
`--timeout`	`int`	`0`	Test timeout in milliseconds. Overrides the timeout set in your Playwright config. When `0`, the config default is used (typically 300,000ms / 5 minutes).
`--project`	`string`	—	Run tests for a specific browser project defined in your Playwright config (e.g. `chromium`, `chrome`, `firefox`).
`--debug`	`bool`	`false`	Launch Playwright in debug mode. Opens the Playwright Inspector, allowing you to step through tests, inspect selectors, and view logs interactively.
`--ui`	`bool`	`false`	Open Playwright’s interactive UI mode. Provides a visual interface for browsing, running, and debugging tests with a built-in trace viewer.

Examples

# Run all tests against your local dev server
paragon test --url http://localhost:3000

# Watch tests run in a visible browser
paragon test --headed

# Filter to only run tests with "login" in the name
paragon test --grep "login"

# Run a single file in Chrome only
paragon test checkout.spec.ts --project chromium

# Retry flaky tests up to 3 times with a longer timeout
paragon test --retries 3 --timeout 120000

# Step through a test interactively with the Playwright Inspector
paragon test --debug --headed

# Open the full Playwright UI for exploring all tests
paragon test --ui

# Combine flags for a targeted local run
paragon test --url http://localhost:3000 --headed --grep "checkout" --workers 4

Running Against Production

Use the --url flag to point tests at a deployed environment:

# Run against a staging environment
paragon test --url https://staging.yourapp.com

# Run against production
paragon test --url https://yourapp.com --project chromium --retries 2

You can also set the PARAGON_TEST_URL environment variable instead of passing --url each time:

export PARAGON_TEST_URL=https://staging.yourapp.com
paragon test

When --url is provided, it takes precedence over the env var.

Default Playwright Configuration

Exported tests come with a pre-configured playwright.config.ts that includes sensible defaults:

Setting	Default
Timeout	300,000ms (5 minutes)
Expect timeout	30,000ms
Workers	1 (sequential)
Retries	0
Video recording	Enabled
Trace collection	Enabled
Screenshots	Enabled
Viewport	1280 x 720
Browsers	Chromium, Chrome

Test results including videos, traces, and screenshots are written to a test-results/ directory.

Use --ui mode for the best local debugging experience — it gives you a visual test explorer with a built-in trace viewer, video playback, and DOM snapshots.

Getting started

Dashboard

Monitoring

Testing

Paragon CLI

AI Tools

Support

Quick Start

How It Works

Running Saved Tests

`paragon test`

Prerequisites

Basic Usage

Flags

Examples

Running Against Production

Default Playwright Configuration

​Quick Start

​How It Works

​Running Saved Tests

​paragon test

​Prerequisites

​Basic Usage

​Flags

​Examples

​Running Against Production

​Default Playwright Configuration

Quick Start

How It Works

Running Saved Tests

`paragon test`

Prerequisites

Basic Usage

Flags

Examples

Running Against Production

Default Playwright Configuration