Bridgewright

Use your local browser from Playwright running in Codespaces.

Bridgewright is a VS Code extension that exposes your Windows Microsoft Edge profile to code running inside your Codespace as a plain Chrome DevTools Protocol endpoint:

import { chromium } from "playwright";

await chromium.connectOverCDP("http://127.0.0.1:37373");

No custom Playwright fixture. No test-code package. No agent-specific API. If code can use Playwright CDP, it can use Bridgewright.

Quickstart

1. Open this repo in VS Code Desktop connected to a GitHub Codespace.
2. Click the Bridgewright status bar item, or run:

   Bridgewright: Start Local Browser Bridge
   

   
3. Wait for the status bar to show:

   Bridgewright: 37373
   

4. In the Codespace, connect Playwright. Edge launches lazily on the first real CDP connection:

   import { chromium } from "playwright";
   
   const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP("http://127.0.0.1:37373");
   

Agents can check readiness with:

node .claude/skills/bridgewright/scripts/check-endpoint.js

Run the full live smoke from the Codespace after the status bar shows Bridgewright: 37373:

node .claude/skills/bridgewright/scripts/check-endpoint.js --timeout-ms 5000
node .claude/skills/bridgewright/scripts/check-endpoint.js --timeout-ms 20000 --playwright
node .claude/skills/bridgewright/scripts/check-endpoint.js --timeout-ms 20000 --diagnose
curl -fsSL http://127.0.0.1:37373/bridgewright/check-endpoint.js | node - --diagnose --timeout-ms 20000

--diagnose is repo-independent. If Playwright is not installed in the current repo, the checker still returns ok: true when HTTP/CDP health is green and marks the Playwright snapshot as skipped. Use --playwright when Playwright attach must be a required gate.

Commands

• Bridgewright: Start Local Browser Bridge
• Bridgewright: Stop Local Browser Bridge
• Bridgewright: Show Status
• Bridgewright: Copy CDP Endpoint
• Bridgewright: Show Logs

State

Windows-side Bridgewright files are stored under:

~\.bridgewright\logs
~\.bridgewright\state.json

Codespace-side files are written to:

~/.bridgewright/endpoint.json
~/.bridgewright/status.json

Per-run helper files are written inside the active workspace:

.bridgewright-runtime/launch-<run>.sh
.bridgewright-runtime/helper-<run>.log
.bridgewright-runtime/ready-<run>.json

Requirements

• Windows desktop VS Code
• Microsoft Edge
• An open VS Code remote window connected to the target Codespace

Status bar

• $(debug-start) Bridgewright — stopped. Click to start.
• $(sync~spin) Bridgewright — arming the Codespace helper.
• $(debug-stop) Bridgewright: 37373 — armed and waiting for CDP connections. Click to stop.
• $(warning) Bridgewright — error. Click to retry after checking logs.

Troubleshooting

Open Bridgewright: Show Logs first. If startup fails before the status bar reaches running, inspect the latest .bridgewright-runtime/helper-<run>.log in the Codespace workspace. A healthy helper log includes BRIDGEWRIGHT_READY.

If the helper is ready but Playwright cannot connect, run:

curl --max-time 5 http://127.0.0.1:37373/json/version
curl --max-time 5 http://127.0.0.1:37373/json/list
node .claude/skills/bridgewright/scripts/check-endpoint.js --playwright --timeout-ms 20000
node .claude/skills/bridgewright/scripts/check-endpoint.js --diagnose --timeout-ms 20000
curl -fsSL http://127.0.0.1:37373/bridgewright/check-endpoint.js | node - --diagnose --timeout-ms 20000

How it works

Bridgewright starts a small helper inside the Codespace that listens on 127.0.0.1:37373. Start arms the bridge. Your Playwright code connects to that endpoint, and the first CDP bytes trigger local Edge startup. The local VS Code extension connects back through VS Code-forwarded WebSocket tunnels and pipes CDP bytes to Edge.

By default Bridgewright uses the permanent Edge user data root at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data. Override bridgewright.edgeUserDataDir if you want a dedicated automation profile instead.

If the Edge window is closed, Bridgewright closes that CDP socket, keeps the status bar bridge running, and waits for the next incoming connection.

CDP traffic uses sockets. It is never proxied over VS Code command RPC.