[icyJoseph]

Summary

The Testing section of the Preserving UI state guide said Playwright getByLabel and getByPlaceholder filter by visibility. They do not: with Activity keeping a hidden page in the DOM, both locators match the hidden copy and .fill() fails with a strict mode violation. Only getByRole excludes hidden elements by default.

• Lead with the tool-agnostic rule: query the accessibility tree, or filter matches by visibility before acting
• Keep getByRole as the default Playwright example
• Move getByLabel / getByPlaceholder into the explicit .filter({ visible: true }) examples
• Note that waiting for visibility does not narrow a query that matches multiple elements
• Drop the Cypress example, which mixed a visibility assertion with a non-existent cy.get() option, and point readers to their testing tool's locator and helper docs, since this behavior varies between tools and versions

Verification

• Playwright 1.61 against a visible form plus a display: none copy: getByLabel matched 3, getByPlaceholder matched 2 (both strict mode violations on .fill()); getByRole and the .filter({ visible: true }) variants each matched 1

[github-actions]

Tests Passed

Commit: 6bccaa8