I have had similar issues with selenium via other languages too - it is generally pretty flaky. E.g. saying a button or some other element doesn't exist when it clearly does.

With great care and effort you can make your tests reliable (especially if you are happy to allow a "best of 3" type test strategy to allow for 1 flake and 2 passes) though. Prodigious use of the wait (i.e. stdlib polling) primitives seems to give you the most bang for your buck.

I am note sure if this is just the nature of web automation, or if selenium is just crap? My gut is to say it is selenium's fault since we never get the same issues when using javascript in the DOM or in an extension)...maybe it is the browser APIs I guess? U have no idea but if this playwright is any better than that would be superb.