Check for async/timing issues
Most flaky tests trace back to a race condition, fixed sleep, or assertion that runs before an async operation finishes.
INTERMITTENT FAILURE TRIAGE
Flaky Test Triage Assistant
Answer four questions about timing, isolation, run order, and environment to identify the most likely cause of an intermittent test failure.
- Uses your inputs in a transparent calculation
- Instant result with practical next steps
- No signup required
Planning guidance only. Validate important decisions with customer evidence and your delivery team.
YOUR INPUTS
Build your result
Complete every field. The result updates only when you choose Calculate.
How it works
Check for shared state and order dependency
Tests that share database rows, files, or globals can pass or fail depending on what ran before them.
Check for environment differences
CI-only failures often point to timezone, locale, or resource-limit differences from your local machine.
Continue learning: Fixing flaky tests for good
Frequently asked questions
What's the single most common cause of flaky tests?
Timing and race conditions in async code — a fixed sleep() instead of waiting for a real condition, or an assertion that fires before an async operation actually completes.
How do I confirm shared state is the cause?
Run the failing test completely in isolation. If it passes reliably alone but fails intermittently in the full suite, shared state or ordering is a strong suspect.
What if none of the four factors apply?
The failure may come from a genuinely intermittent external dependency (network, third-party API) — add logging around any external calls and try running the test in a tight loop to capture more data.
How is the likely cause ranked?
Each yes-flagged factor is weighted by how commonly it causes test flakiness in practice; the highest-weighted flagged factor is surfaced as the most likely cause.
How We Compare
| Feature | MVPHub | CircleCI Test Insights | BuildPulse |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instant cause triage from your own knowledge | Included | Not included | Not included |
| No CI integration required | Included | Not included | Not included |
| Ranked, actionable next steps | Included | Limited | Limited |
| Usable on a single test without any CI history | Included | Not included | Not included |
CircleCI Test Insights and BuildPulse detect flaky tests automatically by tracking pass/fail history across your CI runs. This tool is for triaging a specific flaky test you've already spotted, without any CI integration.
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