[Bug]: Playwright Chromium installation hangs indefinitely at "extracting archive" on Node 26 (Playwright 1.58.2, CachyOS)

[InforesightConsulting]

Bug Description

Bug Description

Fresh installation of Hermes Agent on CachyOS consistently hangs during the Playwright Chromium installation.

The Chromium ZIP downloads successfully and passes integrity verification, but the installer never progresses beyond:

pw:install extracting archive

The process remains alive indefinitely but makes no further progress.

I believe this may be related to the current upstream Playwright/Node extraction issue, but I wanted to provide a fully reproducible Hermes installation report.

---

Environment

• Hermes Agent: latest main (as of 2026-08-01)
• OS: CachyOS (Arch-based)
• Filesystem: btrfs
• Shell: fish
• Python: 3.11.15
• Node.js: 26.4.0 (CachyOS package)
• npm: 12.0.1
• Playwright: 1.58.2
• Playwright Core: 1.58.2

---

Installation

Installed using the official installer:

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

The installer initially failed because the repository uv.lock required regeneration while uv sync --locked was being used.

Running:

cd ~/.hermes/hermes-agent
~/.hermes/bin/uv sync --extra all --locked

completed successfully.

After that, the repository was fully up to date (git pull) and npm install completed successfully.

---

Reproduction

Running:

npx playwright install chromium

always hangs after:

Downloading Chrome for Testing ...
100%
pw:install extracting archive

---

Diagnostics

ZIP integrity

The downloaded archive validates successfully:

unzip -t /tmp/playwright-download-*/playwright-download-chromium-ubuntu24.04-x64-1208.zip

Result:

No errors detected in compressed data.

---

Process state

The Playwright process remains alive indefinitely.

CPU usage stays around:

0.1–0.2%

for more than 10 minutes.

No meaningful CPU activity occurs.

---

Files being accessed

lsof shows:

• ZIP file still open for reading.
• Output file opened for writing:

WidevineCdm/_platform_specific/linux_x64/libwidevinecdm.so

---

Extraction never progresses

Directory remains permanently at approximately:

18 MB
14 files

No additional files are created.

---

Disk space

Sufficient free space exists on both:

• /tmp
• home filesystem

Filesystem is btrfs.

---

Additional observations

Updating Hermes to the latest main does not change the Playwright version.

Current pinned versions remain:

playwright        1.58.2
playwright-core   1.58.2
@playwright/test  1.58.2

---

Possible upstream relation

This appears similar to recent Playwright browser installation hangs reported with newer Node releases where the download completes but extraction never finishes.

If useful, I can provide additional diagnostics or test a proposed fix.

Steps to Reproduce

Reproduction

Running:

npx playwright install chromium

always hangs after:

Downloading Chrome for Testing ...
100%
pw:install extracting archive

Expected Behavior

Expected Behaviour

The Playwright browser installation should complete successfully after downloading Chromium.

After running:

npx playwright install chromium

the installer should:

• Download the Chromium archive.
• Extract the archive.
• Install Chromium into ~/.cache/ms-playwright.
• Exit successfully, allowing Hermes browser tools to be used.

Actual Behavior

Actual Behaviour

The Chromium archive downloads successfully to 100%, but the installation hangs indefinitely during the extraction phase.

The final output is:

Downloading Chrome for Testing ... 100%
pw:install extracting archive

The process remains running but makes no observable progress:

• CPU usage remains approximately 0.1–0.2%.
• The extracted directory remains at approximately 18 MB (14 files) and does not grow.
• The downloaded ZIP passes integrity verification (unzip -t reports no errors).
• The process continues indefinitely until manually terminated with Ctrl+C.

Affected Component

Setup / Installation

Messaging Platform (if gateway-related)

N/A (CLI only)

Debug Report

Debug report uploaded:
  Report     https://paste.rs/gCUXd
  agent.log  https://paste.rs/D1rwA

Operating System

Linux 7.1.5-1-cachyos x86_64

Python Version

3.11.15

Hermes Version

0.19.1

Additional Logs / Traceback (optional)

Root Cause Analysis (optional)

No response

Proposed Fix (optional)

No response

Are you willing to submit a PR for this?

• I'd like to fix this myself and submit a PR

[0fflineuser]

Got the same issue when trying to install it on a raspberry pi 4.
It get stuck on Downloading Chrome for Testing 145.0.7632.6 (playwright chromium v1208) from https://cdn.playwright.dev/dbazure/download/playwright/builds/chromium/1208/chromium-linux-arm64.zip

I had to skip it with curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash -s -- --skip-browser.
But it gets properly installed when set up from the hermes setup command.

So it seems both the install script:

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

and :

cd ~/.hermes/hermes-agent
npx playwright install chromium   

are broken.

[57ar7up-singularity]

On Windows I was able to bypass Playwright installation by renaming NPX CLI access point before install of Hermes Agent

In my case it was "C:\Program Files\nodejs\npx.cmd"

Get yours by command "where npx"

Then you can "hermes desktop" to install classic Desktop App

[zhyu]

Same issue on macOS.

According to microsoft/playwright#40724, Playwright should be upgraded to 1.60+, the current version of hermes uses playwright@1.58.2:

 npm ls playwright
hermes-agent@1.0.0 /Users/zhyu/.hermes/hermes-agent
└─┬ hermes@0.17.0 -> ./apps/desktop
  └─┬ @playwright/test@1.58.2
    └── playwright@1.58.2

Upgrading playwright unblocked it for me locally. I opened #77773 which contains the fix works for me.