Flaky Tests Are Bugs: A Field Guide

A flaky test teaches your team to ignore red builds. That is far more dangerous than the bug it was meant to catch.

Common causes

• Waiting on time instead of state (sleep(2000)).
• Tests that share data and depend on order.
• Animations and network calls that sometimes take longer.

Fixes that work

Wait for conditions, not durations. In Playwright, web-first assertions retry automatically:

await expect(page.getByRole('status')).toHaveText('Saved');

Give every test its own data. Quarantine flaky tests automatically and track them like any other bug.