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+# 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*