TL;DR: The checkout flow test passes on your machine, passes in your demo to the team, and then fails at 3am in CI every single day for two weeks. You dig into the logs and find a different failure mode each time — sometimes it's a missing element, sometimes a timeout, sometimes the te
📖 Reading time: ~36 min
What's in this article
The Real Problem With Recorded Tests
The Tools I've Actually Run in Production (My Current Stack)
Playwright Codegen: What I Actually Use Day-to-Day
Cypress Studio: Good Idea, Inconsistent Execution
Selenium IDE: The One You're Probably Stuck With
TestCafe Studio: The Underdog Worth Knowing About
Head-to-Head Comparison Table
When to Pick What: Match the Tool to Your Situation
The Real Problem With Recorded Tests
The checkout flow test passes on your machine, passes in your demo to the team, and then fails at 3am in CI every single day for two weeks.…