I used a ready-made template to auto-fill forms and scrape product info, but it failed on a site that used dynamic IDs and shadow DOM. I found a few quick edits that usually fix things: replace brittle class selectors with text anchors, add explicit waits for elements to be interactive, and add a small custom script for shadow DOM access.
That process took about 15–30 minutes per template to adapt. Curious how others speed this up: do you prefer adjusting templates manually, or writing small scripts to normalize elements automatically?
I start with a template, then replace class selectors with attribute or text based selectors. If shadow DOM appears I add a tiny script node to pierce it. Templates cut my setup time and the visual editor keeps edits safe.
i mostly keep templates and only change the selector nodes. for tricky elements i add a small js snippet that finds the element by text, then returns it to the flow. that keeps the main template intact and makes upgrades easier.
When a template fails on a specific site, I adopt a two-step approach. First, try replacing fragile selectors with attribute or text based matches and increase explicit waits. If the problem persists, add a short normalization script that runs right after navigation and annotates the DOM with stable data attributes. That way the main template can remain unchanged and the normalization step adapts the page for any template that follows. This saves time when maintaining many templates across sites.
In practice I avoid deep edits to templates. Instead I add a small adapter step that normalizes the DOM into expected anchors. Use stable text anchors, data attributes if present, and fallback to relative xpath. Keep adapters reversible so templates remain generic and easier to update when site layouts change.