On a Windows host a burst of test traffic can drop a loopback connect now and then (every port, any program — measured on the dev desktop). The browser resends it and only waits; Node (libuv) sends a loopback SYN once and fails at ~300 ms with "connect ETIMEDOUT". `e2e/retryConnect.ts` wraps Playwright's request context so that one error is tried again (0.5 / 1 / 2 / 4 / 8 s, the system's own retry waits) while every other failure goes straight to the test; global.setup's health check, login and /api/me and speed.measure's share probe go through it. Unit-tested; e2e 61/61.
E2E characterization (golden-master) net
Playwright tests that lock the app's five core flows — feed (scroll + filter), channel (open → back), player (open/close), settings (dirty-save + guard), and page switching — so the Platform refactor can prove it changed nothing. They assert current, correct behavior; they deliberately do not encode the known Platform bugs (those get their own specs when the sprints that fix them land).
Run
siftlode e2e # against the baked localdev :8080 stack (authoritative)
siftlode e2e-ui # same, Playwright UI mode
siftlode e2e-seed # (re)seed the test account only, no tests
The localdev stack must be up (siftlode dev). global.setup.ts reseeds the account and logs in
once, sharing the session via e2e/.auth/state.json (git-ignored).
A dropped localhost connect — on a Windows host, a burst of test traffic can drop a loopback
connect now and then (every port, any program). The browser resends it and only waits (a loader
outlives an expect timeout); Node does not, so a request from the test side fails with
connect ETIMEDOUT. Those requests go through retryConnect (e2e/retryConnect.ts), which tries
that one error again and passes every other failure straight on. Don't run two e2e suites on the
same machine at once.
Browsers — every flow runs in three projects: chromium (Desktop Chrome), webkit (Desktop
Safari) and ipad (iPad gen 7 landscape: 1080×810, touch, mobile). Install the engines once per
machine with npx playwright install chromium webkit; run one project with
npx playwright test --project=ipad. WebKit catches what every iOS browser inherits from the engine
(JS, CSS/layout, event order). It does not reproduce iPad media refusals: Playwright's WebKit
decodes through the host OS (Media Foundation on Windows, GStreamer on Linux), and measured on
2026-09-14 it played an mp3-in-mp4 and an AV1 mp4 that a real iPad refuses. Check a media format
on a real iPad against the dev stack over the LAN (http://<desktop LAN IP>:8080, e.g. a
login-free /watch/<token> share link).
Target — PW_BASE_URL (default http://127.0.0.1:8080):
-
:8080(baked SPA) is authoritative and same-origin. After a frontend change you mustsiftlode dev(rebuild) for its baked SPA to carry the latest test hooks. -
:5173(Vite dev) serves source live — the fast refactor loop; it proxies/apito:8080, so the stack must still be up. All five flows are proxy-safe:PW_BASE_URL=http://localhost:5173 siftlode e2e
Account & fixture
Tests run as a dedicated admin account e2e@siftlode.local (never a real account;
admin so the suite can reach the admin-only pages / render branches, matching the real primary
user), reset to a deterministic baseline every run by
scripts/e2e_seed.py (run
in-container so it reuses the app's models + argon2 hasher): the top-3 organic channels subscribed,
one in-progress + one watched + one saved video, prefs pinned to language: en. Credentials come
from E2E_EMAIL (default e2e@siftlode.local) and E2E_PASSWORD — required, no default: run
the suite through the ops wrapper, which exports it from the secret store. Override the container name with
E2E_API_CONTAINER; skip the in-container seed with E2E_SKIP_SEED=1.
Selectors
The app has no data-testids of its own and all copy is i18n (en/hu), so the specs key on a thin
data-testid layer (added with this sprint) plus the locale pinned to en. Stable ARIA hooks that
already existed are used directly (role="dialog" on the player, aria-current="page" on the
active nav row, aria-pressed on the feed toggles).
Typecheck
npx tsc -p e2e/tsconfig.json --noEmit (the specs are outside the app's src tsconfig).