Playwright Last Failed (GitHub Action)

This action supports re-running only the Playwright tests that failed when GitHub Actions runs “re-run failed jobs” (or similar retries). It works together with Currents and the @currents/cmd CLI.

Full setup, sharding, orchestration, and CI build ID details: Re-run only failed tests (GitHub Actions) on docs.currents.dev. For background on why re-runs need extra configuration, see the guide Re-run only failed tests.

Purpose

• Before the Playwright test step: restores last run metadata (via Currents cache or the Currents API) and exposes extra Playwright CLI flags as a step output.
• After the job (cache mode only): saves updated last run metadata so the next retry can target failures again.

The step output is passed into the Playwright command—for example npx playwright test … ${{ steps.<id>.outputs.extra-pw-flags }}—so only failed tests run on retry.

How it works

The action runs on Node 24 and installs @currents/cmd globally (npm install -g @currents/cmd). It then behaves in one of two ways:

1. Cache mode (default)

Suited to workflows that report runs to Currents with a record key (typical Playwright reporter + sharding flow).

1. Main step: runs npx currents cache get with the last-run preset. On success, it reads a generated preset file and sets the output extra-pw-flags.
2. Post step: runs npx currents cache set with the same preset so the next workflow attempt can read an updated snapshot.

Authentication and targeting use the Currents record key (input key or CURRENTS_RECORD_KEY). Optional id, path, matrix inputs, and pw-output-dir tune what is cached.

2. API / orchestration mode (use-api or or8n)

Suited to workflows that rely on Currents Orchestration (or otherwise need the CLI to resolve failures via the API). In this mode the post-cache step is skipped.

On re-run attempts (GITHUB_RUN_ATTEMPT > 1), the main step runs npx currents api get-run to fetch the previous run and, when successful, sets extra-pw-flags to --last-failed. The workflow should define CURRENTS_API_KEY, CURRENTS_PROJECT_ID (and related environment variables as in the docs), and set or8n: true (or use-api: true) as shown in the orchestration section of the documentation.

Outputs

Name	Description
extra-pw-flags	Flags to append to the Playwright test command.

If restoration fails, the output may be empty; the workflow can still run tests normally.

Inputs (options)

• key (optional, default ''). Currents record key, or set CURRENTS_RECORD_KEY. Used in cache mode.
• debug (optional, default false). Enables debug logging for CLI commands.
• id (optional, default ''). Cache ID namespace for cache get / cache set.
• path (optional, default ''). Comma-separated paths to include when writing cache (post step).
• output-dir (optional, default ''). Directory for preset output during cache get.
• pw-output-dir (optional, default test-results). Playwright output directory; used for API mode .last-run.json path and for --pw-output-dir on cache set.
• matrix-index (optional, default 1). Shard index for parallel runs (cache get / cache set).
• matrix-total (optional, default 1). Total shards.
• use-api (optional, default false). API-based last-failed resolution (same code path as or8n).
• or8n (optional, default false). Orchestration-oriented behavior (API path; no post-cache step).
• api-key (optional, default ''). API key, or set CURRENTS_API_KEY in the environment.
• project-id (optional, default ''). Currents project ID, or set CURRENTS_PROJECT_ID.
• previous-ci-build-id (optional, default ''). Override for the previous CI build ID when resolving the prior run (see custom CI build ID).

*In cache mode a record key (input or environment) is required for meaningful cache reads/writes.

Setup

1. Add @currents/cmd to the repository as a dev dependency and install with a frozen lockfile in CI (npm ci, etc.). The action installs a global CLI for convenience; pinning @currents/cmd in the repository keeps CI reproducible. See the note in the official docs.
2. Configure Currents (record key, and for API mode, API key and project ID) using secrets and env as described in the documentation.
3. Add this action before the Playwright step and pass extra-pw-flags into the test command.
4. Sharding: set matrix-index and matrix-total from the job matrix (for example ${{ matrix.shard }} and ${{ strategy.job-total }}).

Minimal example (cache mode, sharded)

- name: Playwright Last Failed
  id: last-failed
  uses: currents-dev/playwright-last-failed@v1
  env:
    CURRENTS_RECORD_KEY: ${{ secrets.CURRENTS_RECORD_KEY }}
  with:
    pw-output-dir: test-results
    matrix-index: ${{ matrix.shard }}
    matrix-total: ${{ strategy.job-total }}

- name: Run Playwright
  run: npx playwright test ${{ steps.last-failed.outputs.extra-pw-flags }}

For orchestration (or8n: true), environment variables, custom CURRENTS_CI_BUILD_ID, and copypaste workflows, see Re-run only failed tests (GitHub Actions).

Action metadata

Input/output definitions are in action.yml.

Developing this repository

This action is implemented in TypeScript (src/index.ts, src/post.ts). After changing sources, run npm run all to format, lint, test, and rebuild dist/ before committing.