# Phase 9: Testing & QA - Context

**Gathered:** 2026-03-26
**Status:** Ready for planning

<domain>
## Phase Boundary

Automated testing infrastructure and quality audits. Playwright E2E tests for critical user flows, Lighthouse performance/accessibility audits, visual regression snapshots at 3 viewports, axe-core accessibility validation, cross-browser testing (Chrome/Firefox/Safari), and a CI-ready pipeline. Goal: beta-ready confidence that the platform works.

</domain>

<decisions>
## Implementation Decisions

All decisions at Claude's discretion — user trusts judgment.

### E2E Test Scope & Priority
- Playwright for all E2E tests (cross-browser built-in, official Next.js recommendation)
- Critical flows to test (priority order):
  1. Login → dashboard loads → session persists
  2. Create tenant → tenant appears in list
  3. Deploy template agent → agent appears in employees list
  4. Chat: open conversation → send message → receive streaming response (mock LLM)
  5. RBAC: operator cannot access /agents/new, /billing, /users
  6. Language switcher → UI updates to selected language
  7. Mobile viewport: bottom tab bar renders, sidebar hidden
- LLM responses mocked in E2E tests (no real Ollama/API calls) — deterministic, fast, CI-safe
- Test data: seed a test tenant + test user via API calls in test setup, clean up after

### Lighthouse & Performance
- Target scores: >= 90 for Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, SEO
- Run Lighthouse CI on: login page, dashboard, chat page, agents/new page
- Fail CI if any score drops below 80 (warning at 85, target 90)

### Visual Regression
- Playwright screenshot comparison at 3 viewports: desktop (1280x800), tablet (768x1024), mobile (375x812)
- Key pages: login, dashboard, agents list, agents/new (3-card entry), chat (empty state), templates gallery
- Baseline snapshots committed to repo — CI fails on unexpected visual diff
- Update snapshots intentionally via `npx playwright test --update-snapshots`

### Accessibility
- axe-core integrated via @axe-core/playwright
- Run on every page during E2E flows — zero critical violations required
- Violations at "serious" level logged as warnings, not blockers (for beta)
- Keyboard navigation test: Tab through login form, chat input, nav items

### Cross-Browser
- Playwright projects: chromium, firefox, webkit (Safari)
- All E2E tests run on all 3 browsers
- Visual regression only on chromium (browser rendering diffs are expected)

### CI Pipeline
- Gitea Actions (matches existing infrastructure at git.oe74.net)
- Workflow triggers: push to main, pull request to main
- Pipeline stages: lint → type-check → unit tests (pytest) → build portal → E2E tests → Lighthouse
- Docker Compose for CI (postgres + redis + gateway + portal) — same containers as dev
- Test results: JUnit XML for test reports, HTML for Playwright trace viewer
- Fail-fast: lint/type errors block everything; unit test failures block E2E

### Claude's Discretion
- Playwright config details (timeouts, retries, parallelism)
- Test file organization (by feature vs by page)
- Fixture/helper patterns for auth, tenant setup, API mocking
- Lighthouse CI tool (lighthouse-ci vs @lhci/cli)
- Whether to include a smoke test for the WebSocket chat connection
- Visual regression threshold (pixel diff tolerance)

</decisions>

<specifics>
## Specific Ideas

- E2E tests should be the "would I trust this with a real customer?" gate
- Mock the LLM but test the full WebSocket flow — the streaming UX was the hardest part to get right
- The CI pipeline should be fast enough to not block development — target < 5 minutes total
- Visual regression catches the kind of CSS regressions that unit tests miss entirely

</specifics>

<code_context>
## Existing Code Insights

### Reusable Assets
- `packages/portal/` — Next.js 16 standalone output (Playwright can test against it)
- `docker-compose.yml` — Full stack definition (reuse for CI with test DB)
- `tests/` directory — Backend pytest suite (316+ tests) — already CI-compatible
- `.env.example` — Template for CI environment variables
- Playwright MCP plugin already installed (used for manual testing during development)

### Established Patterns
- Backend tests use pytest + pytest-asyncio with integration test fixtures
- Portal builds via `npm run build` (already verified in every phase)
- Auth: email/password via Auth.js v5 JWT (Playwright can automate login)
- API: FastAPI with RBAC headers (E2E tests need to set session cookies)

### Integration Points
- CI needs: PostgreSQL, Redis, gateway, llm-pool (or mock), portal containers
- Playwright tests run against the built portal (localhost:3000)
- Backend tests run against test DB (separate from dev DB)
- Gitea Actions runner on git.oe74.net (needs Docker-in-Docker or host Docker access)

</code_context>

<deferred>
## Deferred Ideas

None — discussion stayed within phase scope

</deferred>

---

*Phase: 09-testing-qa*
*Context gathered: 2026-03-26*
