{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "Tim Stacey — Field notes", "description": "Field notes on testing and quality engineering by Tim Stacey.", "home_page_url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog", "feed_url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/feed.json", "authors": [ { "name": "Tim Stacey", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com" } ], "items": [ { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/test-health-ci-logs-vs-observability", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/test-health-ci-logs-vs-observability", "title": "Where Test Health Belongs: CI Logs or an Observability Backend", "summary": "Your suite emits pass rate and flake count every run, then buries them in a CI log nobody scrolls; export them over OTLP and a dashboard catches the rot.", "date_published": "2026-06-09T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "TestAutomation", "OpenTelemetry", "TestObservability", "CICD", "DevOps" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/retries-hide-real-bugs", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/retries-hide-real-bugs", "title": "Retrying a flaky test deletes the evidence of a real bug", "summary": "A bug that fails one run in four passes CI 99.6 percent of the time under three retries. Quarantine the test instead and keep the signal.", "date_published": "2026-06-07T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "TestAutomation", "FlakyTests", "CICD", "SoftwareTesting", "DevOps" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/github-actions-cache-strategy", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/github-actions-cache-strategy", "title": "Three caching changes that take 80% off a GitHub Actions build", "summary": "A cached ~/.npm drops a cold Node install from four minutes to thirty seconds, and two more cache changes take the rest of the pipeline down with it.", "date_published": "2026-06-04T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "GitHubActions", "CICD", "DevOps", "SoftwareDevelopment", "TestAutomation" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/resume-site-behind-460-tests", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/resume-site-behind-460-tests", "title": "My resume site ships behind 460 tests", "summary": "I set the direction and Claude Code wrote the code and the tests; 247 unit tests and 213 browser tests are how I trust a site I never hand-wrote.", "date_published": "2026-06-04T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "Astro", "StaticSite", "Playwright", "ContinuousIntegration", "TestAutomation" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/github-actions-parallel-steps", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/github-actions-parallel-steps", "title": "GitHub Actions parallel steps and the matrix jobs you can retire", "summary": "Three matrix jobs for lint, type-check, and unit tests pay three runner boots and an artifact handoff for concurrency that parallel steps fold back into one job.", "date_published": "2026-06-02T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "GitHubActions", "CICD", "DevOps", "TestAutomation", "SoftwareDevelopment" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/contract-testing-vs-e2e", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/contract-testing-vs-e2e", "title": "Contract Testing vs End-to-End: Where Integration Bugs Belong", "summary": "A contract test catches a renamed field in seconds; a 20-minute E2E suite catches it after booting six services. Put each test where it earns its minutes.", "date_published": "2026-06-01T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "ContractTesting", "Microservices", "APITesting", "TestAutomation", "CICD" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/k6-script-authoring-live-telemetry", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/k6-script-authoring-live-telemetry", "title": "k6 Script Authoring calibrates load tests to live traffic", "summary": "Grafana Assistant reads your telemetry, finds endpoints by real RPS and p95, and generates a k6 script that inherits that profile.", "date_published": "2026-05-26T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "PerformanceTesting", "k6", "Grafana", "TestAutomation", "DevOps" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/playwright-ai-test-explosion", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/playwright-ai-test-explosion", "title": "When AI can write every test, what ships to CI is the job", "summary": "AI-generated Playwright tests flake under 1.5%. The new problem is test explosion, and coverage intent is still yours to define.", "date_published": "2026-05-24T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "Playwright", "TestAutomation", "SoftwareTesting", "AI", "CICD" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/github-copilot-fixes-failing-ci", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/github-copilot-fixes-failing-ci", "title": "One click to fix a failing GitHub Actions run", "summary": "Fix with Copilot puts a cloud agent on the failure: it investigates, pushes a fix, reruns CI, and tags you for review.", "date_published": "2026-05-21T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "GitHubActions", "CICD", "TestAutomation", "DevOps", "SoftwareDevelopment", "Playwright" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/ai-cicd-adoption-gap", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/ai-cicd-adoption-gap", "title": "90% use AI in the IDE; the pipeline is another story", "summary": "JetBrains data: daily AI in the editor, almost none in CI/CD. The trust gap closes when AI reduces noise instead of adding it.", "date_published": "2026-05-19T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "CICD", "DevOps", "TestAutomation", "SoftwareDevelopment", "AITesting" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/bitbucket-agentic-pipelines", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/bitbucket-agentic-pipelines", "title": "Bitbucket Agentic Pipelines automates the chores", "summary": "Define an agent block in bitbucket-pipelines.yml, scope it, tie it to an event. It drafts the docs and the coverage gaps; you review.", "date_published": "2026-05-17T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "Bitbucket", "DevOps", "CICD", "TestAutomation", "SoftwareDevelopment", "Playwright" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/playwright-1-59-healer-agent-ci", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/playwright-1-59-healer-agent-ci", "title": "Playwright 1.59 turns failures into reviewable evidence", "summary": "The 1.59 agents plus screencast and browser.bind shift your job from chasing selectors to reviewing what the Healer did.", "date_published": "2026-05-14T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "Playwright", "TestAutomation", "AITesting", "QA", "CI" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/k6-2-ai-performance-testing", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/k6-2-ai-performance-testing", "title": "k6 2.0 moves load-test authoring into the CLI", "summary": "Grafana previewed k6 2.0 at GrafanaCON 2026: AI authoring in the CLI, an MCP server, and a Playwright-to-k6 converter.", "date_published": "2026-05-12T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "PerformanceTesting", "TestAutomation", "k6", "Grafana", "AI" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/playwright-mcp-locator-tax", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/playwright-mcp-locator-tax", "title": "The locator tax nobody puts in the budget", "summary": "Broken-test triage is a staffing decision disguised as a process one. Here is the cost, and where AI self-healing pays it back.", "date_published": "2026-05-12T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "EngineeringLeadership", "SoftwareEngineering", "TestAutomation", "DevProductivity", "QualityAssurance" ] }, { "id": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/playwright-ai-agents", "url": "https://tim.sillysamoyed.com/blog/playwright-ai-agents", "title": "Playwright agents and the new QA skills gap", "summary": "Playwright v1.56 put a Planner, Generator, and Healer in the test runner. The interesting part is what it asks of the engineers who own the suite.", "date_published": "2026-05-10T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "Playwright", "SoftwareTesting", "AI", "TestAutomation", "QualityAssurance" ] } ] }