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OttoTester docs

Replay templates

Replay, not author

Section titled “Replay, not author”

OttoTester has two kinds of template, and it’s worth keeping them straight:

  • A Test Authoring Template creates tests — it runs the planner and generator to produce new test cases.
  • A replay template re-runs tests you already have. No planning, no generation — just execute existing scripts.

Use a replay template when the tests exist and you want to run them again: a nightly regression pass, a quick check after a deploy, a scheduled smoke test.

What a template captures

Section titled “What a template captures”

A replay template pins two things.

What to run:

  • a whole test suite, or
  • all tests on the variant, or
  • a hand-picked set of test cases.

How to run it:

  • Browser — chromium, firefox, or webkit.
  • Heal on failure — whether the healer takes a pass at failed tests.
  • Playwright timeout — how long a step may take before it counts as a failure.
  • Trace capture — off, on-failure, or always.
  • Headed mode — show the browser, or run it hidden.
  • Log level — how much detail the run log records.
  • File an issue on failure — open a tracker issue automatically when a test fails.

Running a template

Section titled “Running a template”

Run a replay template on demand from the runner, or attach it to a scheduled run so the same configuration fires on a cadence. Either way, you get the same report shape as any other run.

Create a separate template when the selection or settings genuinely differ — a “full regression in Firefox” template is distinct from a “quick smoke in Chromium” one. Don’t make near-duplicates; reuse and adjust.

Section titled “Related”