The browser for screenshots

Says whether `osy test --pixels` has a real browser to draw with on this computer, and installs what is missing once, for every project — after saying what it will download and being told yes.

Summary#

osy test --pixels draws your pages in a real browser, checks their layout and photographs them (Layout assertions — is it actually usable on screen?). That needs a program that drives a browser — Playwright — and a browser. osy browser tells you whether both are there, and osy browser install adds what is missing in one place that every project on this computer uses.

Signature#

osy browser [status|install] [--yes] [--json]

Description#

osy browser (or osy browser status) answers in a sentence: ready, or what is missing. When something can be installed it lists each download — what it is, about how big, where it comes from and where it goes — before anything is fetched.
osy browser install shows that same list and asks — Enter is yes. On yes it installs Playwright into ~/.osy/browser. If Google Chrome is on the computer that is all: Playwright drives it. Only when no browser can be started does it ask a second time, for a browser of its own. Nothing is downloaded without a yes; run by a program, with nobody to ask, it downloads nothing unless --yes is given.
It is installed once per user, not per project. A project with nothing installed in it — a new one, one an agent is building — takes screenshots straight away, and no running local platform has to be restarted. A project that has its own playwright in node_modules keeps using its own.
--json answers for a program: ready, needs (nothing, package, browser, node, switched-off, unknown), canInstall, downloads, home, message.

Where else it is offered#

You rarely need to type it. osy init asks once, at the end, when a person is at the terminal; osy shot asks when it needs a browser to take its picture; Studio's first-time setup has a "Yes, install it" for it; and osy test and osy check, when your UI tests pass on a computer without a browser, say that nobody has seen those pages yet and name osy browser install. Each asks the same way, and none asks when it is run by a program — a script or an agent's tool call gets the command to run instead.

What it does not install#

Node.js. Every test that draws a page already needs node (22 or newer), and osy browser uses its npm to fetch Playwright. When there is none, status says so and names where to get it; nothing else can be done until it is there. On Windows that npm is started the way npm.cmd starts it — Node, with npm's own script from Node's folder — so it works whatever folder it is installing into.

Examples#

osy browser                 # ready, or what is missing and what a yes would download
osy browser install         # asks, then installs it for every project on this computer
osy browser install --yes   # for a program that has already asked its person