The Clean Test Automation Monthly is a monthly blog post that shares interesting or useful test automation content which I consumed during the current month. This blog post is always published on the last day of the month.
Let's begin!
Test Design
What Makes a Test a Test? is a thought-provoking blog post which explains what an automated test truly is.
The Many Meanings of 'Test': From Experiment to Evaluation explains how the author transforms understanding into automated tests.
AI in Test Automation: What Actually Makes Sense (and What Doesn’t) introduces six use cases where using AI makes sense, identifies three situations where we shouldn't use AI, and gives tips that help us combine human logic with AI.
AI-Assisted Test Automation: Real-World Experience with Playwright Agents and GitHub Copilot shares the author's experiences using AI tools like Playwright AI Agents, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and LLMs in their test automation workflow.
How I Approach Performance Testing for Modern APIs gives six tips that help us to build solid performance tests for modern APIs.
Why Your 97% Test Coverage Is a Lie explains why high test coverage doesn't guarantee that our code has no bugs and provides three tips that help us to write better automated tests.
From Test Pyramid to Christmas Tree is yet another blog post which argues that the test automation pyramid should be replaced with something else (this time with a Christmas tree).
"It’s Just A Flaky Test": The Most Expensive Lie in Engineering explains why ignoring flaky tests and rerunning the CI/CD pipeline is a costly mistake.
Backend
The best way to clean up test data with Spring and Hibernate describes why the author doesn't use @DataJpaTest and explains how he cleans up test data with Hibernate.
What’s New for Testing in Spring Boot 4 and Spring Framework 7 provides an overview of testing-related changes that were introduced in Spring Boot 4 and Spring Framework 7.
Introducing JUnit 6: What’s New and How to Test Kotlin Suspend Functions identifies the changes introduced in JUnit 6 and describes how we can write tests for Kotlin suspend functions with JUnit 6.
A Guide to Engine Test Kit in Junit 5 describes how we can run tests and track test execution statistics with Engine Test Kit.
Beyond the Happy Path: Synthetic Test Data in Java with Datafaker and Instancio explains why synthetic test data is better than hard coded test data and demonstrates how we can generate test data with Datafaker and Instancio.
UI / End-to-End
Authentication in Playwright: You Might Not Need Project Dependencies identifies the drawbacks of performing authentication in a setup project and introduces a better way to write tests that require authentication.
How Playwright Test Agents Are Changing the Game in E2E Automation provides a solid introduction to both the Playwright MCP server and test agents.
Sharding in Playwright: Speeding Up Your Test Suites and CI Pipelines explains how we can improve the performance of our Playwright tests by leveraging sharding.