Playwright Ambassador | Head of Quality and Reliability at Tilled. Sharing my thoughts on Software Testing, Reliability, Memes, and Leadership

Birmingham, AL
Joined April 2013
The higher the risk, the more likely you need a testing specialist involved in your software project.
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Butch Mayhew 🥏 retweeted
Verification engineering and CI bottleneck is a hot topic right now. Existing paradigms shifted: - diffs matter less, outcomes matter more - reviewing means examining outcomes, not diffs - rich artifacts like rich traces, network logs capture in isolated environment enable effective iteration 1/5
With 451,000+ downloads, Currents touched its highest ever weekly downloads last week. We realise that some of you aren't aware of what we've shipped, that got us here. So, here are 10 features that our engineering team has shipped in the recent past: 1. Shareable failure context Every failure now gets one permanent link that holds everything: the error, the trace, the logs, and the branch and pull request it came from. Open that link, or hand that context to an AI tool in one click, from the dashboard, the IDE or Slack, and have your AI fix it! 2. Evidence sharing for agents Currents' MCP server lets your coding agent attach a trace or a whole run to a PR or a ticket. A reviewer opens a hosted trace player and sees the proof, instead of 'trusting' the agent. 3. Share a whole run A publicly shareable link that carries a whole run with every test in it, with an expiry duration of your choice. Each test also gets its own public context link. 4. Remote MCP server We host our own MCP server, so Claude, Cursor and Codex connect without a local install. You sign in with OAuth, choose the permissions on the consent screen, and get going in no time! 5. One-click IDE sign-in Our IDE extension lets you sign in through the browser in one click. No longer pasting an API key into settings. Click one button and start shipping! 6. Filter by environment Runs, Insights and Explorers all carry an environment value, and you can filter each of them by it. A team that runs the same suite against staging and production can now read the two sets of results apart. 7. New Run summary view The run page is now a flat test list with grouping, sorting, and filters for status, tags, team and project. A details sidebar opens the trace or starts a fix without leaving the list, and your grouping and density choices are remembered. 8. Richer Slack notifications Run notifications now use colored attachments, update in one thread instead of many messages, and post a recovery message after a failure clears. Each failure message carries a Fix with AI button, and its link opens the run summary with the matching filter already applied. AI all the way! 🤖 9. Dashboard refresh Settings, Reports, Test Suite, Code Coverage, Billing and Usage, API keys and Manage Team all moved to a shiny new interface, and is getting lots of love! 💅 10. Set artifact retention An organization can set its own artifact retention policy, for a whole run or per-artifact type. Teams with large traces control their own storage instead of accepting one fixed window. And these are just the highlights. There are many, many, many more changes to make your or your agent's Currents experience delightful like: - Scoped OAuth API access - Rich Linear integration - Richer runs for our REST API - Jira linking over the API - AI Test explanation in the Currents dashboard sidebar - Github run comments - Email domain verification (for member management in organization) - AI usage consent controls For admins, we have: - Self-serve SSO setup with a wizard, - Okta catalog app, - SCIM token rotation, - Email domain verification (work domains), - AI consent setting And so much more! In fact, we're cooking some awesome features right now, that are gonna release soon! Big things incoming! Till then Run your test suites and ship with CONFIDENCE! 🌊🚀
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Butch Mayhew 🥏 retweeted
life is stranger than fiction
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Butch Mayhew 🥏 retweeted
Tokens should just be called Mana
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Butch Mayhew 🥏 retweeted
E2E tests break for two reasons: the product broke, or the test went stale. Most frameworks can't tell the difference. So teams either burn hours triaging or start skipping tests. We built @ShiplightAI to tell the difference. It's open to everyone today.
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Butch Mayhew 🥏 retweeted
This is the best part about being a QA Engineer It does not matter how the product gets built. Quality Assurance process and discipline will still be required Even when that QA process and discipline evolves, we will still be required It’s extremely exciting
Replying to @samsaffron
I don't think many humans are going to be reading or writing code in 5 years, so I don't really think it matters.
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Butch Mayhew 🥏 retweeted
Same is true for testing Give agents a way to verify their work And also test it yourself
If you’re not reading the code, whether explicitly or through agentic inquiry, one or more of these is true: ○ You’re a beginner ○ Software is throwaway ○ You’re prototyping ○ You have no users / revenue ○ You’re taking on debt & risk ○ Your problems are basic And btw. All of this is fine. But the reality is that models are still not at the “full autonomy” stage yet. They make rookie mistakes, they go down bad architectural paths. I just had the best model in the world add a nonsensical 700ms delay to “settle” something and it told me “you’re right, I was cargo-culting” 🤨 I am on the camp that this need will diminish more and more. Most code is indeed going to be assembly-like. But we also have the global internet and software infrastructure riding on these models and narrative, and we have to respect that.
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Butch Mayhew 🥏 retweeted
Official look at the English Exclusive Treasure Rare in the English OP17 The World’s Strongest Warriors set! Edward Newgate aka Whitebeard aka Pops 👴🏼
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AI writes tests that pass for the wrong reasons. Issue 17 of AI in QA covers the shift from framework debates to agent-driven testing. Apple's Safari MCP server, CLAUDE.md guides for test suites, and 14 more. aiinqa.com/ai-in-qa-issue-17
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Butch Mayhew 🥏 retweeted
I ❤️Agent Skills! We’ve built an internal Skills Marketplace that codifies our company’s domain knowledge. Here's 3 principles we find useful when designing skills. engineering.block.xyz/blog/3…
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Butch Mayhew 🥏 retweeted
We just released Playwright Best Practices, the most comprehensive Playwright AI Skill yet. 👉 Check it out at github.com/currents-dev/play… #Playwright #AI #TypeScript
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