Engineer Defends Every Playwright Framework Decision in Unscripted Four-Part Series

Software engineer Stefan Minchev was interviewed across four episodes to defend the architectural decisions behind a Playwright test framework he co-designed for a trading platform used by five QA teams. The conversation, part of a new series called ArchQA Unscripted, covered topics ranging from folder structure and fixture design to test data management and rule enforcement. Minchev argued that architecture represents 85–90% of the real work, while the tests themselves are merely the final layer, and that skipping good architecture converts upfront effort into compounding maintenance costs. He drew a sharp distinction between deliberately chosen technical debt and silently inherited debt, calling the latter far more damaging because no boundary was ever set to violate. The series also tackled whether the Page Object Model remains relevant in the AI era, with Minchev maintaining it holds up when rules are clearly documented.