E2E Testing

End-to-end tests drive a real iOS/Android simulator, emulator, or device with agent-device — a CLI built for AI agents but equally usable as a deterministic e2e runner. Flows are recorded as .ad scripts under e2e/flows/ and replayed as repeatable checks, locally and in CI. agent-device is a dev dependency, so every command below also works as yarn agent-device ….

Commands

yarn e2e:doctor   # agent-device doctor — verify the local environment
yarn e2e          # agent-device test e2e/flows — run all recorded checks
yarn e2e:record   # agent-device replay --update — (re)record a flow
yarn e2e:impact   # sniffler impact — which flows the current diff affects

Prerequisites

• Node.js and platform tooling (Xcode for iOS, Android SDK for Android).
• A build of the app installed on a booted simulator/emulator (yarn ios / yarn android).

Run yarn e2e:doctor to check the environment.

Recording a flow

.ad scripts are produced by the recorder, not hand-authored. Boot a simulator/emulator with the app installed, capture an interaction, and save it under e2e/flows/:

yarn agent-device open MyApp --platform ios
yarn agent-device snapshot -i        # list interactive elements (@e1, @e2, …)
yarn agent-device fill @e1 "user@example.com"
yarn agent-device click @e3
yarn agent-device close
yarn e2e:record                      # persist as a replayable .ad check

yarn e2e then runs every check in e2e/flows, retries flakes, and emits JUnit reports for CI.

Impact selection with Sniffler

Device e2e runs are expensive, so we don't run every flow on every change. Sniffler analyzes the PR diff's TypeScript dependency graph and reports which recorded flows a change can actually reach, mapping source files to flows via .sniffler/test-map.json:

[
  {
    "test": "e2e/flows/launch-smoke.ad",
    "dependsOn": ["src/App.tsx", "src/Navigation.tsx", "src/Scenes/Login/Login.tsx"]
  }
]

Broad-impact changes (listed under runAllWhenChanged in .sniffler/config.json — e.g. package.json, babel.config.js, e2e/**) select the full suite.

Run it locally with yarn e2e:impact (sniffler impact --base origin/main --head HEAD).

CI

• E2E impact (Sniffler) (.github/workflows/e2e-impact.yml) runs on every PR. It is informational and never blocks: if Sniffler errors or can't resolve the graph it fails open (reports "run the full suite") and still exits 0.
• E2E (agent-device) (.github/workflows/agent-device-e2e.yml) has three jobs:
  • agent-device setup check — runs on any change under e2e/**; installs deps and verifies the CLI (agent-device --version). Lightweight, no build.
  • Android e2e (manual) — a workflow_dispatch job that runs the flows against a real Android emulator (reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner), and is validated end-to-end: expo prebuild → yarn relay → build a release APK (a debug build boots the expo-dev-client launcher, not the app) → boot the emulator → install → run the flows. It re-runs Sniffler to set $E2E_FLOWS (impacted flows, or the full e2e/flows suite). The install + run logic lives in e2e/scripts/android-e2e.sh (see Debugging CI runs below).
  • iOS e2e — currently disabled (commented out in the workflow). The previous version only ran agent-device doctor + test with no build or booted simulator, so it reported green while validating nothing. The workflow keeps a step-by-step guide for wiring up a real macOS build + simulator flow that mirrors the Android job.

Debugging CI runs

e2e/scripts/android-e2e.sh runs the suite with --debug (verbose CLI/daemon diagnostics) and, on every attempt (pass or fail), captures evidence into e2e-artifacts/ — a device screenshot, an accessibility snapshot (snapshot.json/.txt), the foreground window/activity (foreground.txt), and recent logcat. It also records a per-attempt video (--record-video). All of this is uploaded by the Upload agent-device e2e artifacts step (actions/upload-artifact, if: always()) as agent-device-e2e-artifacts, so a run can be inspected from the Actions tab whether it passed or failed. The foreground + snapshot are also echoed into the job log for quick diagnosis.

The script also hardens against a CI-only flake: on a freshly-booted emulator the home launcher can ANR and steal window focus right as the app cold-starts, so it waits for the boot animation to finish, sets hide_error_dialogs, cold-launches with open rnstarter --relaunch, and retries.

.ad DSL gotchas (learned the hard way): in a replay, is takes a predicate plus a selector, e.g. is visible text="Folio" (a bare is visible "Folio" is rejected). And wait <arg> waits for on-screen text — wait --connected is treated as the literal text --connected, not a flag (that flag only exists on the standalone wait CLI command).