Playwright is a Node.js library that allows developers to automate various browsers and interact with web pages programmatically. It provides a high-level API for automating browsers, similar to Puppeteer, but with additional features such as support for different browsers like Firefox. By using Playwright, developers can write scripts to simulate user interactions, click buttons, type text, and even evaluate HTML elements to read data from the page. This library is useful for web scraping scenarios where data is available online but not through a public API. The author of this tutorial provides a step-by-step guide on how to set up dependencies, launch Playwright, take screenshots, interact with elements, and read data from the page, making it an excellent resource for developers looking to automate web pages using Node.js.