Local Development Workflow

Best practices for running Bugster during development to validate features and catch issues early

Learn how to integrate Bugster into your daily development workflow for faster feedback, better UX validation, and confident feature delivery.

Discover the most effective ways to use Bugster locally while developing, from quick smoke tests to comprehensive UX validation with AI feedback.

Development Workflow Overview

1. Develop your feature

   You just finished implementing a new checkout flow.

   const Payment = (paymentData) => {
     // Your new feature code
   }
   
2. Quick validation

   Test your new checkout flow immediately to catch obvious issues:

   # Test only what changed
   bugster run --only-affected
   
   # Or test specific checkout flows
   bugster run --quick "Test the new checkout"
   
3. Break testing

   The destructive agent tries to break your new checkout functionality, giving you issues if found:

   # Agent attempts to break your checkout flow
   bugster destructive
   
4. Regression testing

   Make sure your checkout changes didn’t break other flows:

   # Test only what might be affected by your changes
   bugster run --only-affected
   

Common Local Testing Scenarios

1. Quick Feature Validation

After implementing a new feature, quickly test it to ensure it works:

# Test only affected areas (based on git changes)
bugster run --only-affected

# Quick smoke test with limited tests
bugster run --limit 5 --headless

Use --only-affected to run only tests related to your recent changes, saving time and credits during development.

2. Comprehensive Regression Testing

Before committing major changes, run a broader test suite:

# Full regression in background (headless)
bugster run --headless --parallel 8 --limit 20

# All tests with detailed logging for debugging
bugster run --verbose --limit 15

# Silent run for clean output
bugster run --silent --parallel 6

3. Interactive Development Testing

When you want to watch tests run and debug issues:

# Watch tests in real browser with detailed logs
bugster run --headless  --verbose --limit 10

# Debug specific test scenarios
bugster run --headless  --parallel 1 --verbose

You might want to use --headless when first learning, but prefer headless mode for better concentration during development.

Additional Testing Options

Destructive Agent

The agent tries to break your interface and reports issues:

# Run destructive testing
bugster destructive

Natural Language Testing

Ask Bugster to test something specific using natural language:

# Test a component you just built
bugster run --quick "Test this component I just built"

# Test specific functionality
bugster run --quick "Check if the search works with empty results"

Next Steps

Advanced Configuration

Customize your config.yaml for optimal local development settings

Cursor Integration

Learn how to integrate Bugster with Cursor for AI-powered development

This workflow optimizes for fast feedback during development. For production testing strategies, see our CI/CD Integration Guide.