Playwright-MCP 0.0.22 is causing " Execution context was destroyed, most likely because of a navigation" failures with an existing browser

[mastrzyz]

Updating @playwright/mcp from 0.0.20 to 0.0.22

Gives us the following error

Error: MCP Tool browser_snapshot failed with error: [{"type":"text","text":"Error: page._snapshotForAI: Execution context was destroyed, most likely because of a navigation"}]

The Tool with this error is browser_snapshot

We start the @playwright/mcp programatically with an already running browser :

  const server = await createConnection({
    browser: {
      cdpEndpoint: `http://localhost:${CDP_PORT}`,
    },
  });

[mastrzyz]

any clue what changed between 20 and 22? anything I can try to get more logs here.

[pavelfeldman]

If there is a scenario we can run locally, happy to take a look.

[mastrzyz]

If there is a scenario we can run locally, happy to take a look.

Here is the workflow :

1. Playwright test runs and spawns the browser, logs in to teams etc.

Here is how Playwright starts the browser

 📦 Full command-line: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe --disable-field-trial-config --disable-background-networking --disable-background-timer-throttling --disable-backgrounding-occluded-windows --disable-back-forward-cache --disable-breakpad --disable-client-side-phishing-detection --disable-component-extensions-with-background-pages --disable-component-update --no-default-browser-check --disable-default-apps --disable-dev-shm-usage --disable-extensions --disable-features=ImprovedCookieControls,LazyFrameLoading,GlobalMediaControls,DestroyProfileOnBrowserClose,MediaRouter,DialMediaRouteProvider,AcceptCHFrame,AutoExpandDetailsElement,CertificateTransparencyComponentUpdater,AvoidUnnecessaryBeforeUnloadCheckSync,Translate,HttpsUpgrades,PaintHolding,ThirdPartyStoragePartitioning,LensOverlay,PlzDedicatedWorker --allow-pre-commit-input --disable-hang-monitor --disable-ipc-flooding-protection --disable-popup-blocking --disable-prompt-on-repost --disable-renderer-backgrounding --force-color-profile=srgb --metrics-recording-only --no-first-run --enable-automation --password-store=basic --use-mock-keychain --no-service-autorun --export-tagged-pdf --disable-search-engine-choice-screen --unsafely-disable-devtools-self-xss-warnings --no-sandbox  --remote-debugging-port=9016 --user-data-dir=C:\Users\mastrzyz\AppData\Local\Temp\playwright_chromiumdev_profile-EEdMb6 --remote-debugging-pipe --no-startup-window

C:\Users\mastrzyz>npx @playwright/mcp@latest --cdp-endpoint http://localhost:9016 --port=1337
Listening on http://localhost:1337
Put this in your client config:
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "playwright": {
      "url": "http://localhost:1337/sse"
    }
  }
}
If your client supports streamable HTTP, you can use the /mcp endpoint instead.

Start MCP Inspector :

C:\Users\mastrzyz>npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector
Need to install the following packages:
@modelcontextprotocol/inspector@0.12.0
Ok to proceed? (y) y

Starting MCP inspector...
⚙️ Proxy server listening on port 6277
🔍 MCP Inspector is up and running at http://127.0.0.1:6274 🚀
New SSE connection. NOTE: The sse transport is deprecated and has been replaced by streamable-http
Query parameters: [Object: null prototype] {
  url: 'http://localhost:1337/sse',
  transportType: 'sse'
}
SSE transport: url=http://localhost:1337/sse, headers=Accept
Connected to SSE transport
Connected MCP client to backing server transport
Created web app transport
Set up MCP proxy
Received message for sessionId 22ecb628-b021-4918-be5d-d6fbb0426be0
Received message for sessionId 22ecb628-b021-4918-be5d-d6fbb0426be0
Received message for sessionId 22ecb628-b021-4918-be5d-d6fbb0426be0
Received message for sessionId 22ecb628-b021-4918-be5d-d6fbb0426be0

Try to call browser_snapshot

effectively same error

[pavelfeldman]

These tests are passing on Edge: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-mcp/blob/main/tests/cdp.spec.ts. If you can contribute a failing test, I'm happy to take a look.

Sounds like these tests only run Chromium CDP, let me fix the test

[pavelfeldman]

I can repro!

[pavelfeldman]

The fix is in, but it is a workaround, I'll keep this open to resolve it upstream. 0.0.26 will have the fix.

[mastrzyz]

The fix is in, but it is a workaround, I'll keep this open to resolve it upstream. 0.0.26 will have the fix.

Thank you , indeed we expect our Test harness to have already started the browser and Playwright MCP takes over .

For next time I’ll remember to add better repro steps and / or a test 🙇

[mayur-waghela]

i still see this issue in 0.0.26 also, i have a suite which ran successfully before 0.0.22 but now whenever the navigation happens i see this error in response

[Nikolay-Andreychuk-zencoder]

Same for me. Not sure wether it's the same issue or similar one though.

Here are steps to reproduce:

1. Run `npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector npx @playwright/mcp@0.0.26 --browser chrome'
2. Connect to MCP server
3. call browser_navigate to "https://zencoder.ai"
4. Identify Log in button in the snapshot.
5. Call browser_click for the button.
6. It fails with "Error: page.evaluate: Execution context was destroyed, most likely because of a navigation".

As far as I understand it's because of frontend side redirects that happen after navigation.

In Safari it fails with "Error: page._wrapApiCall: Execution context was destroyed, most likely because of a navigation"

I've also tried firefox, msedge, webkit. For all 3 it works fine.

[Nikolay-Andreychuk-zencoder]

Tested a bit more and got some "Execution context was destroyed, most likely because of a navigation" errors even with firefox. But it's not so clear in which cases they arise. I've asked agent to click Sign In and then several Get started buttons on zencoder.ai and got these errors sometimes. All these buttons lead to website with frontend redirects.

[long369486562]

A clearer use case for using the locally owned edge browser should be given, I ran a lot of tests and couldn't get it to work, either the browser extension wouldn't work or it wouldn't connect.

[long369486562]

A clearer use case for using the locally owned edge browser should be given, I ran a lot of tests and couldn't get it to work, either the browser extension wouldn't work or it wouldn't connect.应该给出一个使用本地拥有的 Edge 浏览器的更清晰的用例，我运行了很多测试但无法让它工作，要么浏览器扩展不工作，要么无法连接。

Does this suggest that the final merging of configurations is problematic?

[mastrzyz]

@pavelfeldman verified at least for me that 0.27 fixes the issue for me