What is an archive?
An archive is a self-contained, re-renderable HTML “snapshot” of your UI captured during Vitest, Playwright, or Cypress tests. It contains all the assets and data required to re-render your app UI for Chromatic’s Visual Tests and UI Review features.
The archives generated during each test run can be accessed through the Chromatic web app and are fully inspectable, enabling you to troubleshoot changes and errors in your own browser (without needing to run your tests again).
Note, when you run Chromatic with Vitest, Playwright, or Cypress you’ll notice a “Building your Storybook” step. This is because Chromatic utilizes Storybook behind the scenes to render these archives in its cloud browser and capture snapshots. However, there’s no need for you to manually install or configure Storybook. Chromatic takes care of that for you.