Developers Build AI Agent Using Playwright and LLM Function Calling to Automate Medical Bookings

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A technical guide published on DEV Community outlines how to build an AI-powered agent capable of automating hospital appointment bookings, addressing the common problem of slots disappearing within seconds of becoming available. The system combines Playwright for browser automation with OpenAI's GPT-4o function calling, enabling the agent to reason about page content rather than relying on fragile CSS selectors. It uses a ReAct (Reason + Act) pattern, where the agent observes a simplified HTML or accessibility tree and decides which action to take next. Redis is incorporated to manage session cookies and request queuing, helping avoid IP bans during high-concurrency scenarios such as when a doctor's schedule first opens. The guide requires Python 3.10 or higher, the Playwright library, the OpenAI SDK, and a running Redis instance to implement the full pipeline.

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