Test Profiles — smoke / core / full

The repo defines three profiles via tagged tests + project filtering. Use them to scale test coverage to context: PR feedback gets a fast smoke run, nightly gets the full regression.

At a glance

Profile	Users	Command	When to run
@smoke	1 (standard_user)	make test-smoke	Every PR — fastest sanity check
@core	2 (+ locked_out_user)	make test-core	Adds main error path — nightly
@full	6 (all SauceDemo users)	make test-full	Pre-release regression

How it works

Each test in login.spec.ts inherits a tag from its user data:

test.describe('Login — profiles (@smoke / @core / @full)', () => {
  for (const user of profileUsers) {
    test(`${user.username} — ${user.description}`,
         { tag: user.tags },           // ← inherits ['@smoke'], ['@smoke','@core'], etc.
         async ({ page }) => { /* ... */ });
  }
});

User tags live in tests/saucedemo/users.ts:

export const profileUsers: ProfileUser[] = [
  { username: 'standard_user',  tags: ['@smoke', '@core', '@full'], /* ... */ },
  { username: 'locked_out_user', tags: ['@core', '@full'],          /* ... */ },
  { username: 'problem_user',    tags: ['@full'],                    /* ... */ },
  // ...
];

Project filtering in playwright.config.ts:

projects: [
  { name: 'chromium', use: { ...devices['Desktop Chrome'] } },
  { name: 'smoke', grep: /@smoke/, use: { ...devices['Desktop Chrome'] } },
  { name: 'core',  grep: /@core/,  use: { ...devices['Desktop Chrome'] } },
  { name: 'full',  grep: /@full/,  use: { ...devices['Desktop Chrome'] } },
]

Running npm run test:smoke selects the smoke project, which only runs tests tagged @smoke.

Adding tests to profiles

Tag a test inline:

test('checkout happy path', { tag: '@smoke' }, async ({ page }) => {
  // ...
});

test('promo code expired error', { tag: ['@core', '@full'] }, async ({ page }) => {
  // ...
});

Or tag a whole suite:

test.describe('Mobile checkout', { tag: '@full' }, () => {
  test('on iPhone', async ({ page }) => { /* ... */ });
  test('on Android', async ({ page }) => { /* ... */ });
});

When to add a new profile

Profiles are projects with a grep filter — adding one is trivial:

// playwright.config.ts
projects: [
  // ... existing ...
  { name: 'mobile', grep: /@mobile/, use: { ...devices['Pixel 5'] } },
]

Then in package.json:

"test:mobile": "playwright test --project=mobile"

Reasons to add one:

• A subset of tests that need different config (mobile viewport, slow network)
• A nightly-only set (slow visual regression, integration with paid services)
• A separate environment (staging vs production)

Profile vs --grep

Both work. The difference:

Approach	Pros	Cons
Project (--project=smoke)	Different config per profile; CI-friendly	Requires config change to add new ones
CLI grep (--grep "@smoke")	Ad-hoc, no config needed	All tests share the same config

For long-lived sets that need their own config (timeouts, browser, storageState), use projects. For one-off filtering, use --grep.