test-framework-architecture-audit

What this owns, and what it does not

This audit owns the framework's internal structure: how many tests reach the UI through an object model, how deep the inheritance chains run, how fixtures are scoped, how far helpers have sprawled, whether one naming convention is in force, whether waits and retries are consistent, whether the written conventions still describe the code, and whether CI is wired the way the framework assumes. Every finding is a cross-file pattern, invisible from inside a single test file, which is what separates this from any review that opens one spec and argues about a locator or an assertion.

Three neighbouring capabilities own adjacent ground. Do not duplicate them:

The last boundary is the one readers get wrong, because both are audits. Split them on the object being measured: a suite audit counts tests and asks whether there are the right number at each level (delete, move, quarantine); this audit reads the machinery the tests are written against and asks whether that machinery is sound (collapse a base class, split a fixture, delete a helper, replace a sleep). A suite can be perfectly balanced and sit on a depth-five hierarchy; a framework can be immaculate and carry three hundred redundant E2E tests. Run both if you want the whole picture.

Before scoring: what the baseline is

Two axes need a baseline the codebase cannot supply. A1 needs the team's object-model pattern, because the coverage number means something different for Page Object Model than for App Actions, where bypassing the UI during Arrange is the point rather than a violation: take it from the conventions doc, or from what the code predominantly does, and state which pattern you assumed. A7 needs a written conventions doc, typically docs/test-conventions.md; without one it emits n/a. Never substitute a generic convention set and then report the team as drifted from a document they never wrote. That finding is unfalsifiable and will be argued away, correctly.

A1 - Page-object coverage, purity, and navigation return shape

Three sub-measurements, one band.

Coverage. The share of test files that reach the UI through an object model rather than through inline selectors. The rule being measured: a page object "wraps an HTML page, or fragment, with an application-specific API, allowing you to manipulate page elements without digging around in the HTML" (Fowler, PageObject), which the official Selenium guidance states as "a clean separation between the test code and page-specific code, such as locators" (Selenium, Page Object Models). A test file holding raw locator strings has no such separation.

Purity. Object-model classes that assert are flagged. This one is grounded, not conventional: Fowler records "differences of opinion on whether page objects should include assertions themselves" and concludes "I favor having no assertions in page objects" (Fowler, PageObject), and Selenium states it without hedging: "Page objects themselves should never make verifications or assertions. This is part of your test and should always be within the test's code, never in a page object" (Selenium, Page Object Models). Selenium names one narrow exception: verifying the correct page loaded, done in the constructor at instantiation. Do not flag that one.

Navigation return shape. An action that navigates must return the object for the destination, not void. Fowler: "if you navigate to another page, the initial page object should return another page object for the new page" (Fowler, PageObject), and Selenium gives the reason to keep it: methods returning other page objects make a changed page relationship fail compilation, revealing the needed update without running the tests (Selenium, Page Object Models). A void navigation method throws that compile-time check away.

Also record the object-to-page ratio as evidence, not as a band: two objects modelling one page is fragmentation and one object serving five pages is a god-object, but neither is a hard threshold, because the canonical guidance is deliberately loose. These objects "shouldn't usually be built for each page, but rather for the significant elements on a page" (Fowler, PageObject).

The 90% cut is a practitioner convention, not a published number. Its reasoning: full coverage is the wrong target because a handful of tests legitimately probe raw DOM (a smoke test that the page rendered at all, a test for the object model itself). One test file in ten is roughly the size of that legitimate exception set in suites where the pattern is genuinely enforced. Below 70% the pattern is not enforced, it is optional, and an optional convention produces two vocabularies in one repository. Purity and return shape are not banded by percentage because both are binary rules with a cited source: one violation is a finding.

A2 - Base-class hierarchy depth

Walk the extends graph for every object-model class and every test base class. Report the maximum depth per leaf.

The depth-2 limit is a practitioner convention. No standard sets it. The reasoning is blast radius, and it is arithmetic rather than taste: every class in the chain is a place a change can originate, and every class below it is a place that change can surface. At depth 2 a root edit has one intermediate hop to reason about; at depth 4 it reaches leaf tests through three layers, each of which may override, and the failing test names none of them. WARN rather than FAIL at depth 3 because some products genuinely have a shared intermediate tier (an authenticated-shell class between the generic base and the page). Depth 3 with a written justification in the conventions doc is a defensible exemption; depth 4 with one is still a finding. The alternative is composition: mixins, injected collaborators, or a shared component object give the same reuse without the chain.

A3 - Fixture scope and coupling

Classify every fixture by the scope it actually runs at, then check that the scope matches what tests do to it.

The scope vocabulary is framework-specific and the semantics are documented:

• Playwright has exactly two: "Test-scoped fixtures are torn down after each test, while worker-scoped fixtures are only torn down when the worker process executing tests is torn down", and fixtures are on-demand, so "Playwright Test will setup only the ones needed by your test and nothing else" (Playwright, Fixtures). An unused fixture therefore costs nothing and is not by itself a finding.
• pytest has five, and scope controls destruction: function ("the default scope, the fixture is destroyed at the end of the test"), class, module, package, and session ("destroyed at the end of the test session") (pytest, How to use fixtures).
• JUnit Jupiter's equivalent is the test instance lifecycle: "JUnit creates a new instance of each test class before executing each test method" and that per-method lifecycle "is the default behavior in JUnit Jupiter", while @TestInstance(Lifecycle.PER_CLASS) makes all methods share one instance (JUnit, Test Instance Lifecycle). A class-level cache field on a PER_CLASS class is shared mutable state between tests and belongs in this axis.

Both numeric cuts are conventions of this audit. The scope semantics above are documented; the counts are not. Reasoning for the count: one shared mutable fixture is usually a single deliberate shortcut somebody can explain, while four or more is a pattern, meaning the team has stopped treating scope as a decision and new fixtures will inherit the habit. Reasoning for the 300-line cut: past a few hundred lines a module has stopped being "the database fixture" and become "the fixtures file", the point at which every test file transitively depends on every fixture and the on-demand property above stops buying anything. Never report either cut without the mutation evidence beside it: an 800-line module of read-only fixtures is fine, and a 40-line module of shared mutable state is not.

A4 - Helper sprawl

Two measurements: volume relative to the suite, and evidence of duplication or death.

The 1:10 ratio is a practitioner convention. Reasoning: a helper earns its existence by being called from several places, so in a healthy suite the helper count grows far more slowly than the test-file count. When the two converge, helpers are being written per-test, which is the duplication the helper layer was supposed to remove, now with an extra indirection. One in ten still looks like shared infrastructure; one in five looks like a second copy of the suite.

Name families are the duplication tell: http-helper, api-helper, request-helper, and client-helper in one directory almost always hold three implementations of the same wrapper by people who did not find each other's. Report the family and its members, not just the count.

Dead candidates are helpers with fewer than two call sites across a fixed recent window; state the window in the output. A helper exercised once per release cycle looks dead in a 90-day window and is not, so the output word is candidate: the team confirms, the audit does not delete. An import cycle between helper modules is FAIL on its own regardless of counts, because a layer with no direction makes every helper transitively reachable from every other and defeats any attempt to prune one.

A5 - Naming-convention drift

Check four dimensions independently. For each, compute the adoption share of every pattern present:

A dimension counts as drifted when two or more patterns each hold 20% or more adoption. A pattern under 20% is reported as a hygiene note, not as drift.

The 20% adoption cut is a convention of this audit. Reasoning: the distinction worth reporting is between a leftover and a competing convention. A pattern holding a few percent is residue, usually an unfinished migration or one contributor, and calling it drift generates a finding whose fix is a rename nobody disagreed about. At one file in five, a new engineer reading the codebase cannot tell which convention is in force, and that ambiguity is the actual cost being measured. Set the cut lower if the team is mid-migration and wants residue tracked; keep it fixed across audits either way, so consecutive reports compare.

The element-targeting patterns are not equally good, and published guidance exists: Cypress names "using highly brittle selectors that are subject to change" an anti-pattern and recommends data-* attributes (Cypress, Best Practices), while Playwright recommends "prioritizing user-facing attributes and explicit contracts" (Playwright, Best Practices). This axis measures consistency only; which target to standardize on is a per-file review's concern.

A6 - Retry and wait consistency

Four checks, one band. This axis usually carries the largest blast radius in the whole audit, because everything it flags produces intermittent failures today.

Fixed-duration sleeps. Every wait for a wall-clock duration (page.waitForTimeout(...), cy.wait(2000), a bare setTimeout in setup) is a finding, which is the framework authors' own position: Cypress lists "waiting for arbitrary time periods using cy.wait(Number)" as an anti-pattern and prescribes "route aliases or assertions to guard Cypress from proceeding until an explicit condition is met" (Cypress, Best Practices), and Playwright's replacement is the web-first assertion: "By using web first assertions Playwright will wait until the expected condition is met" (Playwright, Best Practices). Always print the idiomatic replacement next to each instance. A finding that says only "remove the sleep" gets fixed as await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 2000)): the same defect in new syntax.

Non-waiting assertion forms. An assertion that resolves the value first and then asserts on the result (expect(await locator.isVisible()).toBe(true)) does not retry, while the auto-waiting form (await expect(locator).toBeVisible()) does. Both compile; only one waits.

Timeout spread. Count the distinct explicit timeout values. Three or more means nobody owns the timeout policy, and the next engineer will add a fourth.

Retry contradictions. A config-level retry setting that individual files or projects override in the opposite direction is a finding regardless of values. With retries on, "failing tests will be retried multiple times until they pass, or until the maximum number of retries is reached", and a test that failed then passed is reported under the distinct outcome "flaky" (Playwright, Test retries), so a file that opts out silently reclassifies its own flakes as failures.

The sleep counts are conventions of this audit. That sleeps are defects is sourced above; how many make it a framework-level finding is not. Reasoning: a handful is a per-file problem a per-file review catches, but past that sleeps are the framework's de facto wait strategy, fixing them one at a time will not stop new ones appearing, and the remediation changes to a lint rule plus a documented replacement pattern.

A7 - Documented-versus-actual convention drift

Read the team's conventions doc, turn each rule it states into a measurement, then measure. This is the only axis whose baseline comes from the team rather than from this audit, and it is the one teams find most persuasive, because the standard being applied is their own.

A rule counts as drifted at below 80% measured adoption.

Both cuts are conventions of this audit. Reasoning for 80%: a written rule with one exception in five is still recognisably the rule, and the fix is a cleanup. Reasoning for 50%: below half, the document no longer describes what the codebase does. That is not drift, it is fiction, and the remediation may be to change the document rather than the code. Say which you recommend. An abandoned conventions doc is worse than none: it is what new engineers read on day one.

A8 - CI integration health

Six patterns to look for, each grounded in the tooling's own documentation, plus explicit anti-patterns.

Anti-patterns that force FAIL on their own:

• A high retry count used as a flake suppressant. The cut used here, more than 2, is a convention of this audit rather than a documented limit: past two attempts the run stops distinguishing an infrastructure blip from a real intermittent defect, and the "flaky" outcome the runner reports (Playwright, Test retries) becomes the normal outcome rather than a signal.
• Credentials committed to the repository, including a .env.test file. A secret in git is a secret regardless of which branch it is on.
• A fixed sleep in CI setup or a global setup hook. Same defect as A6, amplified: it pays its cost on every shard of every run.

Rolling the eight axes into one report

Any FAIL makes the verdict FAIL, otherwise any WARN makes it WARN, otherwise PASS. This rollup is a convention and deliberately unweighted, because what matters is not the verdict but the fix order. Rank recommendations by blast radius, not by axis number:

1. A6 when it fails: its findings produce intermittent failures today, each costing somebody a re-run this week.
2. A2: deep hierarchies make every other fix more expensive, so collapsing them early lowers the cost of the rest.
3. A1, A3: structural, but the pain is spread over months.
4. A8: usually cheap, and often removes A6 symptoms downstream.
5. A4, A5, A7: hygiene. Nothing breaks if they wait a quarter.

Output format

Emit one Markdown block, in this order.

## Framework architecture audit: <PASS | WARN | FAIL>

**Framework:** <runner + language>   **Object model assumed:** <pattern> (<from the conventions doc | inferred from the code>)
**Inventory:** <n> test files, <n> object-model classes, <n> fixtures, <n> helper modules
**Call-site window:** <the fixed recent window used for A4 dead candidates>

| Axis | Measured | Band | Top finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 Object-model coverage / purity / return shape | <n>% / <n> asserting / <n> void-nav | <band> | <one line> |
| A2 Base-class depth | max <n> | <band> | <the chain, root to leaf> |
| A3 Fixture scope | <n> mutated broad-scope, largest module <n> lines | <band> | <one line> |
| A4 Helper sprawl | 1:<n>, <n> dead candidates | <band> | <the name family, if any> |
| A5 Naming drift | <n> of 4 dimensions drifted | <band> | <dimension + shares> |
| A6 Retry / wait | <n> sleeps, <n> distinct timeouts | <band> | <one line> |
| A7 Convention drift | <n> of <n> documented rules drifted | <band or n/a> | <rule + measured %> |
| A8 CI integration | <n> of 6 patterns present | <band> | <one line> |

## Detail: <one subsection per FAIL axis>

<Evidence at file:line. For A2 print the full extends chain; for A6 a file / line
/ pattern / idiomatic-replacement table; for A7 documented rule against measured
adoption.>

## Fix order (by blast radius)

1. <axis> (<band>) - <what to do> - <who owns it>

## Conventions applied, not standards

<Every band whose cut is a convention of this audit, with the value used: the A1
90% coverage cut, the A2 depth limit, the A3 fixture counts and 300-line module
cut, the A4 1:10 ratio, the A5 20% adoption cut, the A6 sleep counts, the A7 80%
and 50% cuts, the A8 retry-count cut. A reader who disagrees must see the cut.>

## Not covered here

- Per-file review of assertions, selectors, mocking technique, and test naming.
- Suite tier mix, flake rate, and per-tier return. Different object of measurement.
- Any change to the framework. This audit reads; the team decides and refactors.

Keep the conventions section even when it lengthens the report: every cut here is arguable, and a band printed without its threshold gets quoted later as if a standard produced it.

Worked example

A Playwright and TypeScript framework: 312 test files, 38 page objects, 14 fixture modules, 47 helper modules. docs/test-conventions.md exists and states seven rules. Call-site window: 90 days.

• A1. 237 of 312 files import from the page-object directory: 76% coverage. Three page objects contain expect( calls; one navigation method returns void. In the 70-to-90 band with binary violations either way: WARN. Largest offender is the checkout directory, 11 of 14 files holding raw locators.
• A2. CheckoutPage extends CartFlowPage extends EcommercePage extends BasePage: depth 4, FAIL. Any BasePage edit reaches leaf specs through three layers and the failure names none of them. Fix: collapse the two intermediate classes into composition at the base tier.
• A3. All 14 fixture modules test-scoped or worker-scoped read-only, largest 180 lines: PASS.
• A4. 47 helpers to 312 tests is 1:6.6, inside the WARN band. 11 helpers have fewer than two call sites in the window (candidates, not confirmed). One name family: http-helper, api-helper, request-helper. WARN.
• A5. File suffix *.spec.ts 78%, *.test.ts 15%, *_test.ts 7%: only one pattern clears 20%, so not drifted, and the minority patterns become hygiene notes. Element targeting data-testid 55% against role-based 41%: two above 20%, so that dimension is drifted. One of four: WARN.
• A6. 18 fixed-duration sleeps across 9 files, four distinct timeout values, no retry contradiction. Over the 5-sleep cut: FAIL.
• A7. Four of seven documented rules below 80%, worst "always use role-based locators" at 61%, none below 50%: WARN. The 61% and the A5 element-targeting drift are the same fact from two angles, so one migration closes both.
• A8. Sharded four ways with merged reports, JUnit XML, traces on first retry, retries: 1, secrets from the CI store. Six of six, no anti-pattern: PASS.

Rollup: two FAILs, so the verdict is FAIL. Fix order: A6 (18 sleeps, each with its web-first replacement listed), then A2 (collapse the depth-4 chain), then A1 (checkout directory), then A4, then A5 and A7 sequenced together since one migration closes both.

Anti-patterns

Limitations

• Static, not runtime. Every axis reads code; none observe a run. A6 finds the sleeps but cannot say which cause the flakes you are seeing, and A4's dead candidates are candidates because absence of a call site is not absence of a caller.
• The purity check is shallow. A1 catches assertions written directly in an object-model class. A method that calls a helper that asserts passes the check while breaking the rule.
• Framework coverage is uneven. The waiting, retry, sharding, and reporting patterns are documented in detail for a handful of mainstream runners, as the citations show; other runners fall back to generic heuristics with less confidence. Say which runner you audited.
• Percentages count files, not tests. One file holding thirty scenarios weighs the same as one holding a single test. Count cases where the runner exposes them, and state which you used.
• One repository per run, and no effort estimate. A monorepo's test directories walk together, but a separate test-only repository is a separate audit. The fix order ranks by blast radius; what each fix costs depends on team familiarity with the code.
• Every axis is a proxy, and a framework can pass all eight and still be unpleasant to work in. These measurements catch structural debt visible in file shapes and counts. They do not catch abstractions that are named wrong, failure messages that say nothing useful, a local run that takes forty minutes, or fixtures that are correct and incomprehensible. If the team says the framework is painful and all eight axes band PASS, the axes are wrong for that team, not the team. Record the disagreement instead of defending the report.

Sources

Each is cited inline above at the claim it supports; this is the index only.

• Fowler, PageObject - A1 purity, navigation return shape, object-to-page granularity.
• Selenium, Page Object Models - A1 separation rule, no-assertions rule and its one exception, the compile-time benefit.
• pytest, How to use fixtures - A3 five scopes and their destruction points.
• JUnit, Test Instance Lifecycle - A3 per-method default, PER_CLASS shared instance.
• Cypress, Best Practices - A5 selector guidance, A6 arbitrary-wait anti-pattern.
• GitHub, Use secrets in workflows - A8 secret store.
• Playwright docs: Fixtures (A3 test versus worker scope, on-demand setup), Best Practices (A5 user-facing attributes, A6 web-first assertions), Test retries (A6 and A8 retry policy, the "flaky" outcome), Trace viewer (A8 on-first-retry capture), Sharding (A8 --shard=x/y and merged reports), Reporters (A8 JUnit XML output).