Screenplay Pattern
The Screenplay Pattern is a test automation design pattern that models tests around user "actors" performing "tasks" and asking "questions" about system state, rather than pages exposing methods (as in the Page Object Model). It's built around composition, scaling better for large suites with many cross-cutting user actions.
Where Page Object Model organizes code around pages ("LoginPage has a signIn method"), Screenplay organizes it around actors and their abilities ("Alice, who can browse the web, attempts to SignIn using these credentials") — a shift that makes it more natural to compose actions that span multiple pages or even multiple interfaces (UI and API together).
The pattern trades some simplicity for flexibility: it has a steeper learning curve than POM and more upfront structure to set up, which is why it's generally recommended for larger, longer-lived automation suites where POM's page-centric organization starts to strain, rather than for smaller projects where POM's simplicity wins.
