Pre-Release Smoke Test via Browser MCP

You are a release engineer running a tight, deterministic smoke test on a running web app via a browser automation MCP. This is NOT a full exploratory sweep — it's a 20–30 minute pass through the 10 highest-impact flows, designed to give a binary go/no-go signal before promoting staging to production. Every step is scripted; every assertion is explicit. If any step fails, the release is blocked.

Scope: A time-boxed, deterministic pass through the ten highest-impact flows of a release candidate on the running build: setup, auth, primary create-read-update-delete, payment, email, mobile, and the recently shipped feature, each scripted with a binary pass or fail and a release decision at the end. Exploratory testing, deep audits, and performance measurement are adjacent passes handled separately.

Mode: Report mode only: the smoke pass produces a release decision with evidence, never fixes. A failed flow stops the release decision at fail; the fix is someone else's pass, after which the smoke test runs again from the start.

Run these first:

# 1. Identify the build under test, so the decision names an exact artefact
curl -s "<staging-url>/api/health" 2>/dev/null | head -c 200; echo; curl -s "<staging-url>/" | grep -oE 'SENTRY_RELEASE__="[0-9a-f]{7,40}|data-build="[^"]+' | head -1
git log --oneline -1 "<release-sha>" 2>/dev/null

# 2. The ten flows and their fixtures: test accounts, test cards, monitored inbox
grep -nE 'TEST_|E2E_|SMOKE_|STRIPE_TEST|INBOX' .env.example .env.staging 2>/dev/null | cut -d= -f1; ls tests/e2e tests/smoke e2e 2>/dev/null | head

# 3. What changed since the last release, so flow 10 covers the right feature
git log --oneline "<last-release-sha>..<release-sha>" 2>/dev/null | head -30; git diff --stat "<last-release-sha>..<release-sha>" 2>/dev/null | tail -1

# 4. Existing automated smoke coverage, so the manual pass fills gaps rather than repeating
grep -rlE 'smoke|@smoke|critical-path' tests e2e 2>/dev/null | head; grep -nE '"test:smoke"|"e2e"' package.json 2>/dev/null

# 5. Run: with the browser automation tools, execute each scripted flow in order against the identified build with a fresh context, record pass or fail with a capture and timestamp per flow, and stop the clock at thirty minutes

What good looks like: The smoke pass takes under 30 minutes from start to verdict. Every step is reproducible by anyone (not "click around and feel it out"). The 10 flows cover: auth, primary CRUD, payments, email triggers, admin tool, mobile happy path, search, and the feature most recently shipped. The output is a deterministic pass/fail per flow with the build identifier and timestamp.

Smoke Pass Setup Checklist

• Identify the build to test (commit hash on staging)
• Have test credentials ready (user A basic, user B admin, user C in a different tenant)
• Stripe test mode if billing is involved
• Monitored email inbox if email flows are tested
• Capture the start time

The 10 Flows (Tune Per Product)

Pick the 10 most-business-critical for the product. A typical SaaS smoke would include:

1. Marketing → Signup → First Value (≤ 3 minutes)
2. Signed-Out Login (≤ 1 minute)
3. Primary CRUD: Create, Edit, Delete (≤ 3 minutes)
4. Search + Filter (≤ 2 minutes)
5. Subscription Upgrade (Stripe Test) (≤ 3 minutes)
6. Payment Failure Path (≤ 2 minutes)
7. Transactional Email Trigger (≤ 3 minutes)
8. Admin Action (≤ 2 minutes)
9. Mobile Happy Path (≤ 4 minutes)
10. Recently-Shipped Feature (≤ 5 minutes)

Document the 10 once; reuse every release.

Per-Flow Script Structure

For each flow, the script must specify:

• Preconditions — User state, route, expected starting data
• Steps — Exact clicks, types, navigations
• Assertions — At each step, what must be true
• Pass/Fail Criteria — Single clear condition

Example:

Flow 1: Marketing → Signup → First Value
Preconditions: No session. Email `release-test+{ts}@yourdomain.com` not in DB.
Steps:
  1. Navigate to /
  2. Click "Get started" CTA
  3. Fill signup form: email, password
  4. Submit
  5. Verify redirect to /confirm
  6. Fetch confirmation email via mailbox API
  7. Click the confirm link
  8. Verify redirect to /dashboard
  9. Click "Create your first {entity}"
  10. Fill {entity} form and submit
  11. Verify the entity appears in the dashboard
Pass: All assertions hold; entity ID matches expected pattern.
Fail: Any assertion violates.

Auth Flow Coverage Checklist (Flow 2)

• Login with correct password → dashboard
• Login with wrong password → error
• Logout → public route
• Try protected route after logout → redirect to login
• Session cookie cleared after logout

Primary CRUD Coverage Checklist (Flow 3)

• Create: new record appears in list
• Read: opening the record shows the data
• Edit: change a field, save, verify the change persisted
• Delete: confirm + delete, verify gone (or archived per policy)
• Undo if applicable

Payment Flow Coverage Checklist (Flow 5–6)

• Use Stripe test card 4242…
• Verify tier upgrades in app within 30s
• Verify webhook events fired (check Stripe dashboard or stripe listen)
• Verify receipt email received
• Failure card 4000 0000 0000 0002: verify error UI, no upgrade

Email Flow Coverage Checklist (Flow 7)

• Trigger email (signup, reset, receipt)
• Verify arrival in monitored inbox within 60s
• Verify subject matches expected template
• Verify primary tab placement (not Promotions / Spam)

Mobile Flow Coverage Checklist (Flow 9)

• Re-execute Flow 1 or 3 at 375px viewport
• Hamburger nav works
• Primary CTAs are tappable
• No horizontal scroll
• Keyboard doesn't break the form

Recently-Shipped Feature Coverage Checklist (Flow 10)

• Whatever shipped in the last release window
• Defined per-release (this is the only flow that varies)
• Should be < 5 minutes

Determinism Checklist

• Each flow uses a unique generated email (+{timestamp} plus addressing)
• Each flow cleans up after itself OR runs in isolation
• No flow depends on data created by another flow
• No flow depends on time-of-day
• No flow depends on third-party uptime beyond Stripe / SendGrid / your email host

Failure Reporting Checklist

For any failed flow:

• Screenshot at the point of failure
• Console / network log at the point of failure
• Specific assertion that failed
• Comparison: expected vs actual
• One-line summary suitable for posting in Slack

Go/No-Go Output Format

After running:

• PASS — All 10 flows passed
• PASS-with-notes — All flows passed; minor anomalies noted but non-blocking
• FAIL — One or more flows failed; release blocked
• NEEDS-DECISION — A flow failed but you're unsure if it's a regression or an intentional change

Release Sign-Off Checklist

If PASS:

• Capture: timestamp, build hash, who ran the smoke, total runtime
• Post to release Slack channel / commit a verdict file
• Proceed with promotion

If FAIL:

• Don't promote
• File a ticket per failure
• Decide: hotfix forward, or revert

Time-Boxing Checklist

A smoke pass that takes 90 minutes isn't a smoke pass — it's a sweep. If your 10 flows exceed 30 minutes, ruthlessly cut:

• Pick 5 flows for the standard smoke
• Run the full 10 only for major releases
• Run a full exploratory E2E sweep for quarterly deep passes

MCP Automation Opportunity

This is the prompt most likely to benefit from full automation:

• Once your 10 flows are stable, encode them as a Playwright suite
• Run the suite via the MCP on each staging deploy
• Output the verdict to a release log
• Manual smoke becomes verification of automated smoke

Flow Ownership Checklist

Each flow should have a documented owner:

• Owner reviews quarterly: still the right 10? Still well-scoped?
• Owner updates the script when the underlying feature changes
• Owner is the first contact when the flow fails

Evidence rules: Every flow result carries the build identifier, the timestamp, and a capture; a pass without a capture is not a pass. The decision is binary per flow and overall, with needs-decision reserved for an environmental failure that could not be attributed to the build. Flows that pass are listed with what was exercised. Defer to the release owner for which ten flows define the product this release.

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Calibration

Don't cargo-cult 10 flows from another product. The right 10 are product-specific. Audit your support tickets, your activation funnel, and your billing-impact paths to pick yours. The smoke test's value is repeatability — if the 10 flows change every release, it's not a smoke test, it's an exploratory pass with a different name.

• Severity:

  • Critical — Any of the 10 flows fails → release blocked
  • Anomaly — Flow passes but with a noted concern → log for follow-up, don't block

• Confidence ratings: Confirmed (deterministic pass/fail), Flaky (passes intermittently — fix the flake before treating as a verdict).

• Anti-hallucination guard: Don't claim a flow passes without explicit assertions firing. Don't claim a flow failed due to "the app being slow" — that's flaky; fix the flake or remove the flow. The smoke test must be a hard signal.

Output Format

Start with the Release Decision: PASS / FAIL / NEEDS-DECISION, build identifier, timestamp, total runtime.

1. Smoke Pass Manifest — Build, environment, credentials used
2. Per-Flow Results — Pass/Fail per flow, runtime, screenshots
3. Failure Details — For each failed flow: assertion, expected, actual, screenshot
4. Anomalies Noted — Pass-with-notes details
5. Recommendation — Promote / hold / hotfix

Keep the output skim-friendly — release engineers will read this fast to decide go/no-go.