Compact the error a failed command reports, instead of Playwright's whole retry log

[DavertMik]

A failed browser command handed the model Playwright's entire call log — ~850 characters for one disabled Save button: every wait and retry line, element is not enabled once per attempt, a class attribute broken across six lines, and ANSI color codes around all of it.

Before

TimeoutError: click: Timeout 3000ms exceeded.
Call log:
  - waiting for getByRole('button', { name: 'Save' }).first()
  - locator resolved to <button disabled type="button" class="secondary-btn
      btn-text-and-icon

      btn-lg

      disabled">…</button>
  - attempting click action
    2 × waiting for element to be visible, enabled and stable
      - element is not enabled
    - retrying click action
    - waiting 20ms
    … 8 more lines

After (192 chars)

TimeoutError: click: Timeout 3000ms exceeded. - locator resolved to <button disabled type="button" class="secondary-btn btn-text-and-icon btn-lg disabled">…</button> - element is not enabled

The implementation

export function compactErrorMessage(error: unknown): string {
  let text = stripAnsi(String(error));
  for (const strip of STRIP_STRATEGIES) {
    text = strip(text);
  }
  return truncate(text, MAX_COMPACT_ERROR);
}

In src/utils/strings.ts, next to the normalizeInlineText and truncate it reuses. It takes anything and stringifies inside, so no call site wraps its error. No regex, no new file, no new module.

stripCallLog is the only strategy today: split on the marker, drop waiting / retrying / attempting lines, dedupe the rest with a Set, join. Another error shape — a network failure, a stack trace — is a second function in STRIP_STRATEGIES, and both the marker and its noise list stay local to the strategy that uses them.

The locator line goes with the other waiting lines because the tool result already carries command and locator; repeating it costs tokens and tells the model nothing new. Errors with no Call log: section (MultipleElementsFound and its element listing) come back unchanged.

The seven raw lastError.toString() / String(lastError) sites in click, hover, pressKey, form, back and reset now route through errorText(), so that stringification exists in one place.

clickFailureSuggestion() reads this text to tell the model whether the element was disabled, covered, hidden or absent. All four markers sit on lines the filter keeps.

Natural next caller

navigator.ts:476 trims a failed attempt inline — first non-at line, capped at 220. That is a stack-strip strategy waiting to move into this list, but it changes navigator's output, so it is not in this PR.

Tests

bun test tests/integration/ 81 pass. Unit suite passes except the 12 renderCall failures from the asLocator lookup on main, which #131 fixes.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[DenysKuchma]

Fix tests