When Should AI Write Your Tests? A Staff SDET's Decision Framework + Prompts

Description and use

<p><strong>The most expensive mistake in AI-assisted QA isn't a bad test. It's not knowing why you wrote it.</strong></p> <p>Every week I watch engineers open ChatGPT, paste a user story, and type "write test cases for this." Ten seconds later they have 40 lines of confident-looking test code. Nobody asked what actually needed to be tested. Nobody asked what could actually break. The AI didn't fail — the <em>question</em> did. A generated test that verifies the wrong thing is worse than no test at all, because it gives you a green checkmark and a false sense of safety.</p> <p>This isn't an ant

Problem

<p><strong>The most expensive mistake in AI-assisted QA isn't a bad test. It's not knowing why you wrote it.</strong></p> <p>Every week I watch engineers open ChatGPT, paste a user story, and type "write test cases for this." Ten seconds later they have 40 lines of confident-looking test code. Nobody asked what actually needed to be tested. Nobody asked what could actually break. The AI didn't fail — the <em>question</em> did. A generated test that verifies the wrong thing is worse than no test at all, because it gives you a green checkmark and a false sense of safety.</p> <p>This isn't an ant

Outcome

<p><strong>The most expensive mistake in AI-assisted QA isn't a bad test. It's not knowing why you wrote it.</strong></p> <p>Every week I watch engineers open ChatGPT, paste a user story, and type "write test cases for this." Ten seconds later they have 40 lines of confident-looking test code. Nobody asked what actually needed to be tested. Nobody asked what could actually break. The AI didn't fail — the <em>question</em> did. A generated test that verifies the wrong thing is worse than no test at all, because it gives you a green checkmark and a false sense of safety.</p> <p>This isn't an ant

Evidence

When Should AI Write Your Tests? A Staff SDET's Decision Framework + Prompts

Source