Test Pyramid for AI Agents
Traditional testing assumes that given the same input, you get the same output. Agents break that assumption immediately. Learn how the test pyramid evolves when verifying agentic software.
Karpathy’s LLM Wiki as Agent Memory
A practical look at how Karpathy’s LLM Wiki pattern can serve as long term agent memory, turning raw sources, markdown pages, and schema instructions into a living knowledge system for semantic, entity, episodic, summary, and procedural memory.
Agent Memory
When we talk about agent memory, I don't think we really consider what memory actually is. In this piece, I look at various types of memory and explore ways to implement them.
3 Design Principles for Creating Agent Skills
How to design effective agent skills when codifying tribal knowledge
Stop Closing the Door. Fix the House.
I've been seeing more and more open source maintainers throwing [...]
Building an Agentic Engineering Org
About 95% of our engineers are regularly using AI to assist with their development efforts. They are mostly working outside of the IDE, with many running 3-5 agent instances in parallel. Then there's a small population that is actively building our internal agent orchestrator in preparation for the inevitable.
How 7 AI Agents Worked Together to Build an App in One Hour
What if I told you that you could build a [...]
Agents, Subagents, and Multi Agents: What They Are and When to Use Them
A straightforward explanation of agents, subagents, and multi-agents, and how agents are organized to work together
Did Skills Kill MCP?
An overview of Agent Skills vs MCP
MCPs for Developers Who Think They Don’t Need MCPs
Lately, I've seen more developers online starting to side eye [...]
MCP Sampling: When Your Tools Need to Think
Learn how MCP Sampling lets your tools call the AI instead of the other way around.
How I Taught GitHub Copilot Code Review to Think Like a Maintainer
Open source maintainers are getting more contributions than ever, thanks to AI-assisted coding. That's great for community growth but it also means a flood of PRs to review. Here's how I taught GitHub Copilot Code Review to think like a maintainer.
How DevRel is Leading AI Adoption
As AI reshapes how we develop software, DevRel professionals find themselves not just promoting tools, but helping entire communities navigate uncharted territory.
5 Boring Tasks I Gave to My AI Agent Today (That Saved Me Hours)
Forget the flashy demos. Here's everyday use cases for AI.
3 Prompts to Test for Agent Readiness
A series of prompts to test an LLM's capabilities to be used with AI agents
How I Use Goose to Plan My Week with Asana and Google Calendar MCPs
Use MCPs with Goose to automate task management and enhance productivity.
6 Essential Tips for Working with Goose
Practical tips to help you use Goose more effectively and efficiently.
Agentic AI and the MCP Ecosystem
A 101 introduction to AI Agents
Wait, are we just handing over system access to the AI agents?
David Fowler recently asked an excellent question that’s been on [...]
Connecting AI Agents to Your Systems with MCP
Learn how MCP standardizes integrations and fosters an ecosystem for the future of AI-enabled tools
The Betterment Metric
A simple observation at airport security highlights the concept of Betterment and how it applies to engineering teams. Which group are you in?
What if Wordle Could Replace Job Interviews?
What if Wordle could replace job interviews? Every guess, letter choice, and even your settings say a lot about your problem-solving abilities and how you adapt to feedback.
10 Portfolio Projects for Automation Engineers
Those looking to break into the test automation field have difficulty doing [...]
Deserializing API Responses Into Java Records
Here is a recipe for deserializing API responses into the new Java construct: Record, and using it for easier verification.
Test Automation Career Path
A common frequently asked question is "what is the career [...]
Let’s Discuss: Developer Relations
I had the pleasure of getting some of my favorite [...]
Test Management within Continuous Integration Pipelines
Techniques to manage a large suite of automated tests within a CI environment and yet still get fast feedback.
Guide to Conducting Test Automation Code Reviews
Do you know what to look for when reviewing test code? Here are 8 specific things I pay close attention to when conducting code reviews for tests.
Selenium Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) API: How Does It Work?
Angie Jones explains the architecture behind Selenium 4’s new Chrome DevTools API and how to use it to take your tests to the next level.
3 Ways to Achieve In-Sprint Test Automation
Learn 3 practical approaches to achieve in-sprint test automation to reduce risk and technical debt.
Playing with Playwright – Java API
The Playwright open source automation framework has released a Java API for cross-browser end-to-end testing! See how to install Playwright, create tests, and implement the Page Object Model design pattern.
Test Automation University 50K Live Stream Party
Join the TAU community as we celebrate this amazing milestone - 50,000 engineers now enrolled! I'll be hosting a Live Stream Party which will include special guests (instructors and students), trivia games, and TAU swag prizes! All who attend will also get a cool new TAU 50K badge.
Selenium for Games: Automating Tic Tac Toe
This recipe shows how to automate the playing of an online tic-tac-toe game using Selenium WebDriver and Java
Test Automation Beyond Java 8
While most people are still using Java 8 from [...]
Selenium 4: Mocking Geolocation
This recipe demonstrates how to use Selenium 4 to mock geolocation of user within Chrome DevTools.
Sharing State Between Cucumber Steps with Dependency Injection
When using Cucumber, if you want to share state between [...]
Using Apache POI to Read Excel Files
Here is a recipe for programmatically reading data from an [...]
How to Select Dates from Date Pickers
Here is the recipe for automating the task of selecting [...]
Automation Cookbook: Coding Recipes for Tests
For the next couple of months, I’ll be live streaming every Wednesday at 12:00 PM PST. In each session, I’ll take a specific automation challenge and come up with a recipe for solving it.
Tips for Healthy Page Object Classes
The most popular design pattern used in web UI test codebases is the Page Object Model (POM) design pattern. These tips should help you design healthy classes that implement the Page Object Model design pattern. The use of this pattern promotes separation of concerns (e.g. tests vs managing state), reduces code duplication, and provides reusable methods.
Live Stream of Cypress and Applitools
I joined a live Twitch session with Jason Lengstorf on [...]
Selenium 4 Relative Locators
Selenium 4 brings Relative Locators (originally named Friendly Locators). This functionality was added to help you locate elements that are nearby other elements. The available options are above, below, toLeftOf, toRightOf, and near.
Selenium WebDriver Tutorial with Java
I've released a brand new course - completely free - [...]
Writing Good Gherkin Enables Good Test Automation
Behavior Driven Development, also known as BDD, is an example-based [...]
How to Achieve In-Sprint Automation
Many development teams won't attempt to create features and automate the tests for those features [...]
A Look at New Java Features in Test Automation
Since Java 8, there have been many cool features introduced. In fact, Java is releasing a new version every 6 months! With so many additions, it can be hard to keep up. Here’s how some of the newer features from Java 8 – 12 can be used in test automation.
Verifying Entire API Responses
Most people do a pretty lazy job of testing APIs. [...]
My FREE Java Course
With Java being the most popular language for test automation, [...]
Test Automation Code Smells
A code smell is code that isn't technically wrong, meaning, it works; however, the implementation of said code is problematic in that it's difficult to manage and thus can lead to delayed development time and even the introduction of bugs. There are many writings about code smells in application code, but it's not always apparent how to clean up those smells within a test automation code base. There are also code smells which are unique to test automation in particular, which cannot be found in those writings.I've written about seven code smells in test automation, and how you can refactor your code to rid it of the smells.
Open Letter to Codeless Test Automation Tool Vendors
There's been a resurgence of codeless test automation tools. I've been burned by these types of tools in the past, so have written an open letter to codeless tool vendors with a list of demands. Many have responded. There's also been lively discussion from community members.
Most Popular Programming Languages for UI Test Automation
I recently conducted research to determine the most widely used programming languages for UI test automation. A complete write-up of my findings, with percentage breakdowns, can be found on Applitools blog. But here's the results at a quick glance.
Test Automation for PDF Files
There’s two ways to invoke PDF test automation using this tool. In the first one, I'll show how to execute the PDF validation via the command line. In the second, how to execute it as part of an automated test.
Testing in Continuous Integration
DZone published a 2019 Guide to DevOps e-Book which contains [...]
Test Automation Strategy
I've published a free course on Test Automation University that [...]
Selenium Conference Keynote
Fun fact: In addition to being an automation engineer, I [...]
Test Automation in 2019: A Glimpse of the Near Future From the Experts Who Shape It
Joe Colantonio hosted Dave Haeffner, Gil Tayar, and myself for [...]
Simplifying Automation with Visual Validation
When automating scenarios, we have to be very careful to [...]
7 Habits of Highly Effective SDETs
Software developers in test (SDETs), engineers who are a hybrid of software [...]
Explain Machine Learning to Me Like I’m Five
For many, Machine Learning and AI are nothing more than buzz words. However, machine learning is a realized form of AI that is currently being utilized by top tech companies in products that we use every day. For this reason, it’s important that we understand how this works and what vulnerabilities we should we aware of as testers. In this session, we’ll stay away from all the fancy jargon, and instead look at a demonstration of machine learning in action.
TestProject – Sharing Reusable Automation via Addons
I've been exploring some of the newer testing tools lately [...]
The 10 Commandments of Navigating Code Reviews
If you've been in software development for any amount of [...]
The Reality of Testing in an Artificial World
There's a lot of talk nowadays about the impact that [...]
Test Automation Utility to Verify Email
With JavaMail API, I've been able to not only verify that an email was received, but also verify its contents, open links within the email, extract data sent (temp passwords, verification codes, etc). Someone recently asked me about email verification within automation, so I decided to open source the utility methods I've written that use the JavaMail API.
6 Reasons to Co-locate Your Application and Automation Code
Does your application and test automation code reside in separate repositories? If so you're missing out. Angie Jones explains the benefits.
Inheriting WebDriver Throughout Your Page Object Classes
I’ve seen (and written) several automation projects where each page class requires a constructor that takes a WebDriver object so that the page classes can access the current browser instance. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this, but I do find it a bit annoying to pass around the WebDriver like a hot potato. There’s a couple of ways to handle it and both involve inheritance.
2018 Test Automation Trends
Before 2018 kicks in, 4 leading experts joined forces to [...]
How to Become an Automation Engineer
Are you interested in becoming a test automation engineer? Do [...]
Keynote: Owning Our Narrative
The concept of shifting left suggests that testing be done earlier in the software development process. The notion of this is admirable and, when done properly, can enable teams to be very successful with their quality initiatives. However, the implementation of this practice is often defined from the top down where the powers-that-be aren’t necessarily experts in testing. This has led us to the current state of the industry where being a programmer has become a requirement to shift left. This is a very dangerous state to be in. It’s time to rise up and own our narrative. In this talk, we will explore how to do just that by climbing out of the box that we’ve been placed into as testers and redefining what it means to shift left - from our perspective.
Applying Object-Oriented Programming Principles to Test Automation Design
When learning an object-oriented programming (OOP) language, we learn about [...]
Automation Sync: Exploring Strategy and Results
At Twitter, we currently have 14 automation engineers and more [...]
#WSC2017Conf: Developing Your Brand Inside and Out
Don’t become a closet rock star! While developing your brand as a thought leader, your company may not be aware of the impact that you’re making on the industry. Learn key strategies to ensure that your external stardom is also recognized and celebrated internally within your company.
The Future of Software Testing
I was recently featured in QASymphony's e-book, The Future of [...]
Acing the Technical Interview for SDETs
Test Automation Engineers are in high demand, but that doesn’t [...]
Make Your Automation Behave: Extending Your Framework for BDD
When done properly, Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) can drastically improve the [...]
Test Automation 101
Mike Horn, a writer for Smartsheet, reached out to me [...]
3 Lessons from the Test Automation School of Hard Knocks
The odds of a test automation project succeeding are not [...]
Book Chapter – The Digital Quality Handbook: Guide for Achieving Continuous Quality in a DevOps Reality
I had the honor of contributing a chapter to Eran Kinsbruner's new book, The Digital Quality Handbook: Guide for Achieving Continuous Quality in a DevOps Reality. My chapter is titled "Actualizing Quality While Practicing Agile" and focuses on how to effectively perform mobile testing in an agile environment.
Test Automation for Machine Learning: An Experience Report
Once upon a time I needed to automate tests for machine learning...here's what I learned about testing, automation, and the future of both.
5 ways to drive your automation engineers away
Test automation is an essential ingredient to a successful continuous integration/deployment pipeline. [...]
#EuroTestConf – How to Get Automation Included In Your Definition of Done
European Testing Conference 2017
Hybrid Tests: Blurring the lines of the Automation Pyramid
Mike Cohn's Test Automation Pyramid is a guide that is [...]
TechGirlz Workshop: Motion Detection with Raspberry Pi and Python
TechGirlz, a wonderful organization that I volunteer with who is [...]
BDD Without the Three Amigos: Maybe Talking To Yourself Isn’t So Bad
If you search online for articles on Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), [...]
How to Create a Test Automation Framework from Scratch
As quality initiatives shift left in an agile world, software testing teams [...]
Adding a Peripheral View to Test Automation
One reason why human testers are far better at finding [...]
#TestBash – How to Get Automation Included in Your Definition of Done
TestBash Philly 2016
#SeConf16 – How to Get Automation Included in Your Definition of Done
Selenium Conf 2016, London, UK
Firebug, You’re Fired
When interviewing candidates for UI automation openings, I like to [...]
A Day in the Life of an Automation Engineer
TL;DR: taught a workshop and it went great. planned as [...]
Test Masters Academy Reinventing Testers
It's conference season for me! In my role, it's imperative [...]
Teaching Testing in College Courses
I'm an Adjunct Instructor who teaches Java programming to college [...]
Rest-Assured with Cucumber: Using BDD for Web Services Automation
Behavior Driven Development (BDD) has become a popular approach in [...]
A Guide to Patent Development
The Ministry of Testing recently launched Gem Webinars, and I [...]
Why Developers Should Not Lead Your Automation Efforts
Developers should not lead your automation efforts. I've never seen this succeed. In fact, many times I have been brought on to teams to clean up the mess that is left behind when developers try to lead this effort. The reason is simple. Developers are not automation engineers.
Pair Programming as an Automation Training Technique
There's quite a demand for automation engineers. Unfortunately, as the [...]
Self-Writing Test Cases
Test cases are important. They provide step by step instructions [...]
BDD Believer
I've been in Automation for more than 10 years. I [...]
My Transition From Test to Dev to Test
Marlena Compton wrote a very interesting blog post on the [...]
Keynote Commencement Speech
I received a pleasant surprise when the Principal of Sci [...]
BDPA Workshop: Learn Java in 3 Hours
The Black Data Professionals Association (BDPA) sponsors a wonderful technology [...]
Societal Influence on Gender Imbalance in Technology
I am very passionate about advocating for minorities and women [...]
Representation Matters – US2020 RTP Gaming Expo
I hosted a vendor booth at the US2020 RTP Gaming [...]