Protractor directConnect for Low-Traffic Suites Without a Selenium Server

The goal is to reduce infrastructure cost for a low-traffic end-to-end suite by enabling Protractor's directConnect mode, which drives the browser directly through WebDriver without a separately running Selenium server.

The configuration requires a locally available browser driver executable matching the selected browser, and option names plus driver discovery behavior differ across Protractor releases. The saving applies to avoided server capacity only; the test runner still launches a driver process and consumes CI time. This mode is not a substitute for a Selenium grid when remote browsers, parallel sessions, or centralized driver management are required.

Before standardizing, the installed Protractor release should be checked against the project's Angular and Node.js versions, since framework support status is version-sensitive.

Which Selenium-server-specific capabilities does the current suite rely on that would be unavailable under directConnect? How should the driver executable path be declared for the specific Protractor version in use to prevent session startup failures?