Workspace management overview

Design a workspace that scales from a first test to a full automation suite.

Moving from your first test to a full-scale automation suite requires shifting your focus from "how to write a command" to "how to design a system". A well-architected workspace ensures your tests stay fast, reliable, and easy to maintain as your application evolves.

The anatomy of a workspace

When organizing your workspace, consider the following four pillars:

Configuration

A workspace is centered around an optional config.yaml file with settings that apply to your whole test suite. Access the Project configuration guide to learn how to create and manage configuration files for your suite.

Architecture

Before writing dozens of tests, you must choose a repository structure that matches your app's business logic. Whether you choose a User Journey or Feature Test model, learning how to organize your test architecture ensures your tests remain scalable and maintainable.

Advanced execution

As your suite grows, you need control over how tests are discovered and executed:

• Tags: Categorize Flows (e.g., smoke, production_ready) to run specific subsets of tests.
• Sequential order: Flows are meant to be isolated, but you can run a few of them first, in a fixed order, when validating complex multi-step events.

Analysis

Astra Scout doesn't just tell you if a test passed, it provides the why:

• Reports and artifacts: A structured report and a screen recording for every run.
• Record your flow: Watch back the screen recording of a run, or record part of a flow with startRecording.
• AI test analysis: Use AI commands to check things that traditional assertions miss, and let the AI explain or fix a failed run.

Best practice

Each Flow should be able to run on a completely reset device, even if you are using sequential execution.

Next steps

If you are setting up a new repository, follow this path:

1. Configure your config.yaml using the instructions in Project configuration.
2. Define your folder structure based on the strategies in Design your test architecture.
3. Tag your critical tests to organize and filter execution as described in Test discovery and tags.