Browser-driven, end-to-end tests that run against Spoolman as it is deployed for real: the production Docker image (with the client bundle baked in and served on the same origin as the API) backed by a real PostgreSQL database. They complement the backend HTTP suite in ../tests_integration, which never touches the UI.

• tests/smoke.spec.ts — starting from the app root, clicks through every entry in the sidebar (spools, filaments, vendors, locations, settings, help, home) and confirms each page renders inside the app shell with no browser-console errors.
• tests/crud.spec.ts — the core happy path in one session: create a manufacturer (vendor) → a filament under it → a spool of that filament, verifying each through its list page.

The tests navigate purely through the UI — the sidebar to reach each list and the list's "Create" button to reach each form — using language-independent link targets. Only the initial "open the app" step uses a direct URL. The app's language is forced to English (see tests/fixtures.ts) so the label and button matchers are stable regardless of the runner's browser locale.

From the repository root:

uv run poe itest-frontend

This builds the client (if client/dist is missing), builds the donkie/spoolman:test image, brings up the stack with Docker Compose, waits for it to become healthy, and runs Playwright. It tears the stack down afterwards.

Useful environment variables:

• SPOOLMAN_CONTAINER_ENGINE=podman — run with rootless Podman instead of Docker.
• SPOOLMAN_HOST_PORT=9000 — publish Spoolman on a different host port (default 8000).

If you already have Spoolman running somewhere, you can skip the orchestration and point Playwright straight at it:

cd tests_frontend
npm ci
npx playwright install --with-deps chromium
SPOOLMAN_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8000 npx playwright test

The tests create data with unique, non-ASCII-tagged names, so they are safe to run repeatedly against a persistent instance (though a fresh database is what CI uses).

The test-frontend job in .github/workflows/ci.yml reuses the same donkie/spoolman:test image built for the backend integration tests, so the frontend is verified against the exact artifact that ships. On failure it uploads the Playwright HTML report as a build artifact.