A new era for software testing

Given your code-base is mature enough, please don't have a single Skill/Steering/Persona/Ruleset (or whatever) for your "QA Engineer." This is just the same "my behavioral file can one-shot the entire system build" kind of thinking that will give you expensive, marginal results as the system grows.

If you want to have success in this space, get really fine-grained. Every single test scope needs its own behavioral files.

Have your core behavioral file define some simple specifics around Test Pyramid, Test Purposes, checks for tautological tests, etc. Then get _really_ specific;

<test-type>-architect (plan)

<test-type>-engineer (execute)

<test-type>-resolver (problem solver, maintenance, how to manage a failure, etc.)

e.g., playwright-architect, etc.

Then create additional ones for Unit tests, API tests, contract tests, or any other required test layer for the SUT.

Overengineered? Maybe given the size of your codebase. But for anything significant, you are codifying what humans and their skillsets do.

In theory. The only difference between today and "the aughts" is that we have machines that can spit out a ton of code very quickly.

Nothing has changed about the discipline or honesty around testing (you can skip automated tests even faster now if you wish). You can and should work with AI to write tests, but you have to know the difference between a good test and a "looks good on paper" test in order for it to truly be effective and raise the quality of what you're building.

But not any more! Now I point the LLM to the code and order it to write unit tests, covering all edge cases, etc. I'd rather spend 3 hours arguing with the LLM than writing unit tests! :-D

Two of the reasons I never liked writing tests is

- they didn’t seem to usually assert much internal logic

- they would have to be maintained along with the original code

I think scenario testing is much better instead because the actual way a person uses a feature hardly changes but the internals might change a lot.

So imagine I’m making an e-commerce website. There are lots of internal mechanisms. I’ll have an agent testing all the functionalities as if it were a customer. This gives me much much more confidence while writing code because it is more uncorellated with the code.

Tomorrow I can change a lot of internals but the testing agent stays the same.

There’s something to note though: not all code is possible to be scenario tested. Like data engineering and other things where the feedback time is huge.