Tests
What is on the Tests page, and why does it start with a few tests?
Why it works this way
Your tests start with the riskiest few, not all of them at once, and the next ones are written from what those find.
A long list of tests on day one is overwhelming, and most of it would be guesswork before you know what the first tests find. So your tests start with the riskiest few and learn from them.
What stays the same is the three questions every agent idea has to answer: do people want the result, can the work be done on real inputs, and will anyone pay. The first tests are written to cover them. A pass on them means the idea has earned more work. It never means the agent works.
What we gave up: a full map on day one. You see the riskiest few tests and the risks they cannot answer yet, not every test you might ever run.
What it is
The page called Tests is a numbered road of tests, riskiest first, written for your agent from everything on your board.
Your tests open with the riskiest few, usually three, for about two weeks of work. In one you do the agent's job by hand for a few people. In one you run the work on real inputs. In one you ask buyers to commit money. Under them, drawn dashed, wait the risks those three cannot answer yet.
How to use it
- On the Blueprint, pick the shape your agent will ship as, then press Write the tests. The tests that touch that shape are worded for it.
- Read the road. Each card shows the test's name, where it stands (Not started, In progress, Waiting on you, Cleared, Didn't pass, No clear read or Stopped), how it is run, how many days it takes and, when the test was sized, how many people.
- Open a card. The first press on a test that does not exist yet writes it (Build this test), and the button then reads View test.
- Start at the top if you can. The order is our suggestion, and you can open any step first.
- When every test on the road has cleared, the dashed risks are turned into real tests, written from what the first ones found.
Want a different kind of test on the road? Open the Test library (see "What kinds of test are there?").
What it will never do
- Lock a test. Every test on the road opens, in any order.
- Write the next tests before the first ones have passed.
- Tell you a pass means the idea works.
If something looks off
- Four tests, not three. When the stakes are high, a fourth test goes in front, and the road says why. The tests then take about three weeks.
- "Test 2 did not pass. The road waits here until you pick a way on." The road stops growing at a test that did not pass, or that came back with no clear read ("Test 2 did not get a read."). What happens next is your call, never the road's (see "What are the four roads after a test?").
- "Reading what the three found…" The next tests are being written. Give it a moment.
- No Test library button. Boards made before the road of tests keep their older list: no dashed risks and no library. A shared board opened as a viewer shows the tests but cannot write new ones.
- Write the tests is greyed out. Pick a shape first.
- A stopped test sits in its own Stopped group at the very bottom of Tests, not on the road.