i’m seeing a codex-hosted browser startup failure before any trivial smoke test can begin.
when using the codex-hosted browser tool, startup fails immediately with:
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, mkdir ‘/.playwright-mcp’
expected: a trivial smoke test on https:// example com should start successfully and write artifacts to repo-local browser directories.
actual: browser startup fails before the smoke test begins, so the browser lane is blocked.
minimal repro:
- fresh codex session in the repo
- trivial browser smoke test against https:// example com
- startup fails immediately with the error above
effective env:
HOME=/Users/dmitrymatskevich
XDG_CACHE_HOME=
TMPDIR=/var/folders/ns/98nq_gpj0nxf9sknqrsqd1qw0000gn/T/
USER=dmitrymatskevich
PWD=/Users/dmitrymatskevich/cursor/personal/health
why this looks codex-hosted, not upstream playwright-mcp:
- i compared codex-hosted launch vs direct fresh launch of @playwright/mcp@0.0.70
- direct fresh launch outside codex host works in both isolated mode and persistent mode when explicit writable dirs are provided
- in the inspected upstream package/source, i did not find a literal .playwright-mcp path
this makes the failure look more like a codex wrapper / env handoff issue than:
- a repo-local browser scaffold issue
- or an upstream @playwright/mcp package bug
is this a known codex-hosted browser integration bug, and is there a recommended workaround?