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End-to-End Testing

This project uses Playwright to run browser-level tests against a real moltis gateway process.

The goal is simple: catch web UI regressions before they ship.

Why This Approach

  • Tests run in a real browser (Chromium), not a DOM mock.
  • Tests hit real gateway routes and WebSocket behavior.
  • Runtime state is isolated so local machine config does not leak into test outcomes.

Current Setup

The e2e harness lives in crates/web/ui:

  • playwright.config.js configures Playwright and web server startup.
  • e2e/start-gateway.sh boots the gateway in deterministic test mode.
  • e2e/specs/smoke.spec.js contains smoke coverage for critical routes.

How Startup Works

e2e/start-gateway.sh:

  1. Creates isolated runtime directories under target/e2e-runtime.
  2. Seeds IDENTITY.md and USER.md so onboarding does not block tests.
  3. Exports MOLTIS_CONFIG_DIR, MOLTIS_DATA_DIR, and test port env.
  4. Starts the gateway with:
cargo run --bin moltis -- --no-tls --bind 127.0.0.1 --port <PORT>

--no-tls is intentional here so Playwright can probe http://.../health during readiness checks.

Running E2E

From repo root (recommended):

just ui-e2e-install
just ui-e2e

Headed mode:

just ui-e2e-headed

Directly from crates/web/ui:

npm install
npm run e2e:install
npm run e2e

Test Artifacts

On failures, Playwright stores artifacts in:

  • crates/web/ui/test-results/ (screenshots, video, traces)
  • crates/web/ui/playwright-report/ (HTML report)

Open a trace with:

cd crates/web/ui
npx playwright show-trace test-results/<test-dir>/trace.zip

Writing Stable Tests

  • Prefer stable IDs/selectors over broad text matching.
  • Assert route + core UI state, avoid over-asserting cosmetic details.
  • Keep smoke tests fast and deterministic.
  • Add focused scenario tests for high-risk features (chat send flow, settings persistence, skills, projects, crons).

CI Integration

The just ui-e2e target is the intended command for CI.

Pull requests use the local-validation flow: the E2E workflow waits for a local/e2e commit status, published by ./scripts/local-validate.sh.

Pushes to main, tags, and manual dispatch still run the hosted E2E job.