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install Stagehand and Playwright

By Arch Brooks on August 11, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence

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Yes. On Gentoo, the cleanest setup is to use your existing Node.js environment and install Stagehand + Playwright locally in a project. Stagehand v3 no longer bundles Playwright internally; it is designed to work with Playwright as a separate dependency.

1. Verify Node/npm

Playwright currently supports Node.js 22.x, 24.x, and 26.x.

node --version
npm --version

If you're using your existing Node 24 setup, you're good.

2. Create a Stagehand project

mkdir -p ~/Applications/stagehand
cd ~/Applications/stagehand

npm init -y

npm install @browserbasehq/stagehand playwright

3. Install Chromium

For Gentoo, I recommend installing only Chromium initially:

npx playwright install chromium

Playwright stores its downloaded browser binaries under ~/.cache/ms-playwright on Linux.

Verify:

npx playwright --version
npx playwright install --list

4. Test Playwright

cat > test.js <<'EOF'
const { chromium } = require("playwright");

(async () => {
    const browser = await chromium.launch({
        headless: false
    });

    const page = await browser.newPage();

    await page.goto("https://example.com");

    console.log(await page.title());

    await page.screenshot({
        path: "example.png"
    });

    await browser.close();
})();
EOF

node test.js

You should get:

Example Domain

and:

ls -lh example.png

5. Test Stagehand

cat > stagehand-test.mjs <<'EOF'
import { Stagehand } from "@browserbasehq/stagehand";

const stagehand = new Stagehand({
    env: "LOCAL",
    verbose: 2,
    model: "openai/gpt-4.1-mini"
});

await stagehand.init();

const page = stagehand.context.pages()[0];

await page.goto("https://example.com");

console.log(await page.title());

await stagehand.close();
EOF

Run:

node stagehand-test.mjs

Stagehand's current V3 API uses Stagehand from @browserbasehq/stagehand, with env: "LOCAL" for a local browser.

6. If you want Firefox/WebKit too

npx playwright install chromium firefox webkit

Playwright officially supports Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.

Important Gentoo note

I would not use:

npx playwright install --with-deps

on Gentoo. Playwright's Linux dependency installer is intended around supported Debian/Ubuntu environments and uses their package manager.

Instead, let Gentoo provide the system libraries, and let Playwright provide the browser binaries.

If Chromium fails to start, run:

DEBUG=pw:browser node test.js

That gives the browser-launch diagnostics recommended by Playwright.

Recommended final layout

~/Applications/stagehand/
├── node_modules/
├── package.json
├── package-lock.json
├── stagehand-test.mjs
└── test.js

And your core dependencies are simply:

npm install @browserbasehq/stagehand playwright

This is a particularly good setup for what you were asking about earlier—AI-controlled browser automation that can log into an application, perform the workflow, and capture the steps/video. Stagehand provides the AI layer while Playwright provides the actual browser automation.

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