specreel

Turn the Playwright trace.zip your tests already produce into a watchable, shareable demo — and regenerate it on every green build, so the demo can't go stale. When it would, a test fails instead.

A demo and an end-to-end test are the same artifact: a recorded browser flow. Record/prompt once → replay = demo, share = send, assert = test.

Captions are deterministic by default (no AI, no network). AI narration is opt-in + BYO-key. Runtime is stdlib-only (Pillow only for --mp4); it's one file.

• Install · Quickstart · Getting a trace
• The gallery & players · AI narration
• Configuration · Publishing
• GitHub Action · CLI · Docs

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Install

pip install specreel            # the CLI (core is stdlib-only)
pip install "specreel[mp4]"     # + Pillow, for --mp4 export
pip install "specreel[mcp]"     # + an MCP server, to drive it from an AI coding tool

Prefer not to learn the CLI? An MCP server and a Claude Code skill let you drive Specreel from Claude Code / Cursor / Claude Desktop — see integrations/.

Quickstart

No tests yet? Point it at your running app — it crawls, suggests flows, and scaffolds a runnable Playwright script:

python specreel.py recommend http://localhost:3000   # -> specreel_flows.py
python specreel_flows.py                             # -> test-results/*/trace.zip
python specreel.py test-results -o site --bundle     # -> the gallery

Have a trace? One trace → one demo:

python specreel.py path/to/trace.zip -o out/ --title "Sign up flow" --mp4
# -> out/demo.html (self-contained, shareable)   out/demo.mp4 (optional)

Have a whole test run? A directory → a gallery:

python specreel.py test-results/ -o site/ --bundle
# -> site/index.html        gallery, one card per flow
# -> site/<flow>/demo.html  a player per flow
# -> site/gallery.html      ONE portable file (gallery + every player inlined)
# -> site/manifest.json     machine-readable index

Getting a trace

Turn tracing on so Playwright records screenshots (that's what makes it watchable):

JS/TS — playwright.config.ts: use: { trace: 'on' } Python — pytest --tracing on, or:

context.tracing.start(screenshots=True, snapshots=True)
# ... your test ...
context.tracing.stop(path="trace.zip")

Works on traces from Playwright JS/TS, Python, Java, or .NET — the parser is language-agnostic.

The gallery & players

• Cards carry a demo + test pill from the one source, a real end-state thumbnail, playback duration, and a freshness badge.
• Players have Prev/Play/Next, keyboard arrows, a step list, a 🔊 read-aloud toggle (Web Speech, no audio files), and — in the bundle — a ▶ Play all tour.
• Freshness: each build diffs every flow's step signature against the previous manifest.json; a flow that changed but still passes gets an amber ⟳ updated badge (the UI moved, the test stayed green, the demo refreshed).
• gallery.html is a single self-contained file — email it, or host it anywhere.
• Themes: --theme dark|light (or theme: in config).

AI narration

Optional layer that rewrites the deterministic captions into friendlier, sales-engineer-style lines. Opt-in, BYO-key, ~<$0.01/flow.

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
python specreel.py test-results/ -o site/ --ai

The literal caption stays the source of truth (shown as a sub-line); no key or any error degrades gracefully to literal captions; password/secret fields are masked. More in docs/ai-narration.md.

Configuration

A specreel.yml (auto-discovered, or --config) configures a gallery build — parsed by a tiny built-in YAML subset (no PyYAML). Generate one with specreel.py init <traces>.

title: My App — Product Flows
product_name: My App        # AI narration says this, not localhost URLs
theme: dark                 # dark | light
ai: false                   # true (+ key) to narrate
bundle: false               # true to also emit gallery.html
setup_urls: [/login]        # leading nav steps to drop from every demo
flows:
  signup: { title: Sign up, public: true }
  internal-admin: { hidden: true }

Full key reference: docs/configuration.md.

Publishing & sharing

python specreel.py publish site/ --to ghpages       # gh-pages -> Pages URL + <iframe> embed
python specreel.py publish site/ --to dir:/var/www  # or copy into any static webroot

ghpages needs a GitHub remote; it builds a clean single-commit gh-pages branch, force-pushes, and prints the URL + embed snippet. Or just send site/gallery.html. Post build summaries to Slack with --notify <webhook>.

Hosted option — Specreel Cloud (cloud/): a self-hostable Flask service for hosted galleries with a dashboard, public/private visibility, and view analytics.

python specreel.py publish site/ --to cloud --project my-app \
  --cloud-url https://cloud.example --token scl_xxx

The hosted service is a separate proprietary codebase (open-core) — sign up at app.specreel.dev, or self-serve docs at specreel.dev.

GitHub Action (the freshness loop)

examples/github-workflows/specreel.yml publishes the gallery to GitHub Pages on every push to main, and posts a sticky PR comment with a per-flow summary on pull requests — so the demo can't be older than the last passing build. See docs/github-action.md.

CLI reference

Command	Does
specreel.py <trace|dir> -o out	Render a demo (single) or gallery (directory).
specreel.py recommend <url>	Crawl a running app → suggest + scaffold flows.
specreel.py init <traces>	Scaffold a specreel.yml.
specreel.py publish <site> --to ghpages|dir:<p>	Deploy a gallery to a URL.
specreel.py summary <site>	Markdown build summary (for PR comments / CI).

Key flags: --bundle --ai [--ai-model M] --theme dark|light --mp4 --notify <url> --config f. Full reference: docs/cli-reference.md.

Docs & more

• 📚 docs/ — quickstart, CLI, config, recommend, publishing, AI, the Action.
• 🧪 Dev: python -m pytest. Single file: specreel.py.

License

The Specreel CLI is AGPL-3.0-or-later — free to use, modify, and self-host; changes to network-served derivatives must be shared. The hosted service (cloud/) is proprietary. Contributions: see CONTRIBUTING.md.