Slow end-to-end tests plague development pipelines, but they're fixable. The article targets common Playwright performance killers: overly long tests, manual waits like `waitForTimeout`, and permissive CI configurations. Splitting tests and removing arbitrary delays directly combat flakiness and wasted time.

Beyond obvious fixes, subtler issues drain speed. Testing business logic within E2E suites adds unnecessary overhead; use web-first assertions instead. Configuring `playwright.config.ts` is critical: adjust `workers` for CI parallelism and switch traces to `retain-on-failure` to avoid bloated artifacts.

Optimizing for local versus CI environments is key. Enable `headless: !process.env.CI` for debugging locally while saving resources in pipelines. Regularly pruning redundant tests reduces maintenance. There's no universal config, but tailoring settings to your pipeline's constraints delivers predictable, faster runs.