# Synthetics AI: From Local Script to Product Continuing from [[01.24.26 - Personal Reliability Engineering - Synthetics, Playwright, Automated Testing|earlier thoughts on PRE]]. --- ## The Local Machine Problem Running Playwright as a Windows scheduled task works, but it's a leaky abstraction over reliability. The irony: a health checker that depends on: - Laptop being awake - Network connectivity - Security configurations not gating execution > *"Works on my machine"* evolved into *"runs on my machine, sometimes."* --- ## Cloud-Native Alternatives Move the check off local infrastructure entirely. | Approach | Tradeoffs | |----------|-----------| | **GitHub Actions** (cron) | Free tier generous. First-class Playwright support. Output commits to repo or updates API. | | **Cloudflare Workers** + Browser Rendering | Puppeteer-compatible at the edge. Pay-per-invocation, scales to zero. | | **AWS Lambda** + Playwright Layer | Heavier lift. Free tier + pre-built layer = serverless synthetics for pennies. | | **Railway / Render / Fly.io** | Container wakes on cron, runs, sleeps. Minimal cost at low frequency. | > **Common thread:** Decouple from personal device uptime. Let the cloud's SLA be your SLA. --- ## Product Angle: The Self-Demonstrating Landing Page What if this experiment became its own landing page? A showcase for "Synthetics AI tooling." **Landing page features:** - 🟢 **Live status indicator** pulling from automated checks - 🔗 **Link to full [[Synthetic Site Health]]** with metrics, trends, rationale - 📖 **The narrative:** *"I built this to monitor my own digital garden. Here's how."* **The feedback loop:** ``` Tool monitors itself → Monitoring is the demo → Demo is the documentation ``` A living case study. --- ## The AI Evolution Natural-language check definitions that compile to Playwright assertions: > *"Verify my portfolio page loads and has at least 15 case studies"* **Intent-driven reliability:** describe what matters, the system figures out verification. This is the productization opportunity: abstract away the Playwright syntax entirely. Users speak intent, the tool speaks browser automation. --- **Footnote on platform friction:** I'm tempted to join the Mac Mini bandwagon. The Android development experience has been clunky: getting updated versions of [[The Product Diary|Vibe Reader]] to deploy via Android Studio is inconsistent and opaque. Meanwhile, I've seen firsthand how seamless macOS → iPhone development flows. The grass isn't always greener, but sometimes it's just... mowed.