Playwright Trace/Report Artifact Upload Fails in CI

When a Playwright job fails you want the trace and HTML report to debug it, but the artifact upload is easy to misconfigure: traces captured only on retry, a wrong path, or an upload step that is skipped because the test step already failed.

What this error means

A failed Playwright job leaves no trace or report to download - the artifact is empty, missing, or the upload step did not run at all because the previous step failed and the job short-circuited.

CI log

Warning: No files were found with the provided path:
playwright-report. No artifacts will be uploaded.

# or, traces never captured:
trace: 'on-first-retry'  # and retries: 0 -> no trace exists

Common causes

Upload step skipped after a failed test step

By default a later CI step does not run once an earlier step fails. Without if: always(), the artifact upload is skipped on exactly the runs you most need it.

Trace capture mode produces nothing

trace: "on-first-retry" only records on a retry; with retries: 0 no trace is ever written, so the artifact path is empty.

Wrong artifact path

A custom outputDir/report folder that does not match the upload-artifact path means the uploader finds no files.

How to fix it

Always upload, and capture traces on failure

.github/workflows/ci.yml

# .github/workflows/ci.yml
- run: npx playwright test
- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  if: always()
  with:
    name: playwright-report
    path: playwright-report/

Set a trace mode that records the failure

playwright.config.ts

// playwright.config.ts
export default defineConfig({
  retries: process.env.CI ? 2 : 0,
  use: { trace: 'retain-on-failure' },
});

How to prevent it

Add if: always() to artifact uploads so they run on failure.
Match the upload path to Playwright’s report/output directory.
Pick a trace mode that records when tests actually fail.