Gate Deployment on a Smoke Test Suite

Run a fast post-deploy smoke suite that exercises critical paths and blocks promotion when any check fails.

~35 mintestingdeploymentops

Task

Define a minimal smoke suite that verifies the most critical user journeys after each deployment.

When to use this

A deploy looks healthy but a critical login path is broken, and the issue is found by users hours later.

Prerequisites

A test runner such as Playwright
Stable test accounts
A deploy pipeline you can hook

Steps

1. Write a small suite covering login, a core action, and one read path.

test('critical paths', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/login');
  await page.fill('#email', process.env.SMOKE_USER);
  await page.fill('#password', process.env.SMOKE_PASS);
  await page.click('button[type=submit]');
  await page.waitForURL('/dashboard');
});

Expected output: The suite fails fast if login or the dashboard is broken.

2. Run it against the freshly deployed environment and gate promotion.

npx playwright test smoke --reporter=line || { echo 'smoke failed, abort promotion'; exit 1; }

Expected output: A failing smoke test stops the promotion before users are affected.

Troubleshooting

Problem

Smoke suite grows too slow

Solution

Keep it under a few minutes and move deeper checks to later stages.

Problem

Flaky login due to shared data

Solution

Use dedicated test accounts and reset state per run.

Limitations

Smoke tests cover only critical paths, not full regression.
Requires stable test accounts and data.
Cannot catch issues in untested flows.

What this recipe does

Define a minimal smoke suite that verifies the most critical user journeys after each deployment.

A deploy looks healthy but a critical login path is broken, and the issue is found by users hours later.

Prerequisites

A test runner such as Playwright
Stable test accounts
A deploy pipeline you can hook

Procedure

Write a small suite covering login, a core action, and one read path.

test('critical paths', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/login');
  await page.fill('#email', process.env.SMOKE_USER);
  await page.fill('#password', process.env.SMOKE_PASS);
  await page.click('button[type=submit]');
  await page.waitForURL('/dashboard');
});

Expected result: The suite fails fast if login or the dashboard is broken.

Run it against the freshly deployed environment and gate promotion.

npx playwright test smoke --reporter=line || { echo 'smoke failed, abort promotion'; exit 1; }

Expected result: A failing smoke test stops the promotion before users are affected.

How to confirm it worked

Run the commands above and confirm every expected result in order. If a step does not produce the stated output, use the troubleshooting notes before continuing. A passing run shows an intentionally broken deploy aborts promotion at the smoke gate, while a healthy deploy proceeds.

Troubleshooting

Smoke suite grows too slow — Keep it under a few minutes and move deeper checks to later stages.

Flaky login due to shared data — Use dedicated test accounts and reset state per run.

Limitations

Smoke tests cover only critical paths, not full regression.
Requires stable test accounts and data.
Cannot catch issues in untested flows.