2.9Step 5 — Decide the opinionated defaults

Before scaffolding, make these rules explicit.

Preferred stack

• Node.js
• TypeScript
• Playwright Test
• npm
• ESLint
• Prettier
• dotenv
• zod

Preferred API harness style

Use Playwright APIRequestContext by default for API automation.

Preferred pattern:

• request context per appropriate scope
• domain-specific wrapper clients
• shared auth setup
• schema validation with zod
• explicit assertions for status, headers, and important body fields

Preferred UI harness style

• selectors live inside the owning page object
• page objects hold reusable page-specific actions
• flows handle multi-page business behavior
• assertion helpers hold reusable domain expectations
• component objects exist only for reused page fragments

Preferred agent loop

At minimum:

Planner → Generator → Evaluator

Secondary roles can be added later:

• Reviewer
• Doc-gardener

Note that Playwright itself now ships first-party Test Agents (planner / generator / healer, since v1.56) scaffolded with npx playwright init-agents --loop=claude. They produce Markdown test plans in specs/ and a seed.spec.ts entry point. This harness keeps its own Planner → Generator → Evaluator loop because it covers more than test authoring (docs, plans, standards, CI), but the official agents are a good drop-in for the plan-and-generate portion — and the healer is worth adopting for flaky-locator repair either way.

Preferred repo-memory style

• short root instruction files
• deep guidance in docs/
• plans written to files
• handoffs written to files
• evaluator reports written to files
• future agents should be able to continue from repo state alone

These defaults should be visible in the final template.