mediumConceptScenarioMidSeniorLead
How do you decide what to automate and what to leave manual?
6 min readUpdated 2026-08-15
Answer
Short answer
Automate what runs often, has a deterministic oracle, sits on a stable interface, and guards an expensive escaped bug. Push each check to the cheapest layer that can still fail meaningfully, treat flakiness as a defect rather than noise, and keep human time for exploratory testing, not scripted regression.
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