E2E Testing

Archon uses agent-browser (by Vercel Labs) for end-to-end browser testing in workflows like archon-validate-pr. It is an optional external dependency — core Archon functionality works without it.

Installation

# Install globally
npm install -g agent-browser

# Download browser engine (Chrome for Testing)
agent-browser install

Verify Installation

agent-browser --version
# Expected: prints version number (e.g., 0.x.x)

# Quick smoke test — opens a page and closes
agent-browser open https://example.com
agent-browser close

Where It’s Used

The following workflows and commands depend on agent-browser:

Resource	Type	Purpose
archon-validate-pr	Workflow	E2E testing phase of PR validation
validate-ui	Skill	Comprehensive UI testing
replicate-issue	Skill	Issue reproduction via browser
archon-validate-pr-e2e-main.md	Command	E2E tests against the main branch
archon-validate-pr-e2e-feature.md	Command	E2E tests against the feature branch

Platform-Specific Notes

Docker

agent-browser is pre-installed in the Archon Docker image. No action needed.

macOS / Linux

Works natively after running the install commands above. If the daemon fails to start:

# Kill stale daemons and retry
pkill -f daemon.js
agent-browser open http://localhost:3090

Windows

agent-browser has a known bug where the daemon fails to start due to Unix domain socket incompatibility on Windows.

Workaround: Run agent-browser inside WSL while dev servers run on Windows. See the E2E Testing on WSL guide for detailed setup instructions.

Running Without agent-browser

If agent-browser is not installed, the E2E workflow nodes will fail when the agent tries to invoke agent-browser. The AI agent is instructed (via prompt) to stop after 2 failed connection attempts and produce a code-review-only report — but this is a prompt-level instruction, not automated workflow logic. Results may vary depending on the AI model’s adherence to the instruction.

You can safely run all non-E2E workflows without agent-browser installed.