Auto-Heal (Pro)

When a UI test fails on rerun because the page changed, Auto-Heal recovers the test against the new UI — so refactors and copy edits don’t break your suite.

Two Ways UI Tests Fail on Rerun

When you rerun a UI test that previously passed, two things can have changed since the last run:

Failure mode	What it looks like
UI moved, flow still correct	A button got renamed, a form got an extra field, a sidebar got reordered. The test fails even though there’s nothing actually broken in your product.
The flow itself is broken	Real bug. The test catching it is the point.

A plain rerun can’t tell these apart. Auto-Heal is what tells them apart — it lets the test recover from the first kind, while the second kind still fails (which is what you want).

Auto-Heal is a Pro feature (Starter and Standard). Free-plan users still have full access to plain rerun and scheduled rerun — the auto-heal toggle is shown but locked, with the upgrade pathway in plain sight. See Rerun for plain replay.

What Happens When You Turn Auto-Heal On

Auto-Heal toggle	Behavior
Off	TestSprite runs your saved test. If the page changed in a way that breaks the test, you get a Failed status — the test won’t pass until you fix it manually.
On	TestSprite runs your saved test. If the page changed but the underlying flow still works, the test recovers and is marked Passed with a note that auto-heal succeeded. If the flow itself is broken, the test stays Failed (correctly).

Net effect: tests that used to break on every UI tweak now stay green through refactors, design system swaps, and copy edits — without anyone editing the test by hand. Real bugs still surface as Failed.

Turning Auto-Heal On

Auto-Heal opts in at the rerun-trigger level — there’s no project-level setting. Three places carry the toggle, and each remembers its own choice:

Surface	Where the toggle lives
Single test rerun	The Rerun this test confirmation dialog has an Auto-heal on UI drift toggle. Choose per rerun.
Rerun all (batch)	The batch confirmation dialog carries the same toggle; it applies to every test in the batch.
Scheduled runs	The schedule creation page has an Enable auto-heal toggle saved with the schedule. Set once at creation; subsequent runs use it automatically.

Rerun

Full mechanics of rerun itself — where the buttons are, the difference between Run and Save & Run, and Quick Start

When Auto-Heal Helps and When It Doesn’t

Helps: minor UI refactor that moves things around

Renamed buttons (Submit → Save), restructured navigation (sidebar moved into a hamburger), added a wrapper element around a form field. The flow you’re testing still works; only the references to the page are stale. Auto-Heal recovers most of these.

Helps: design system swap on a page you didn't think about

A team replaced a custom dropdown with a shadcn Select. Component API changed, DOM changed, accessibility roles changed — pure refactor. Auto-Heal re-binds the test to the new component without anyone hand-editing it.

Helps: copy edit you didn't think tests would care about

“Continue” became “Next” on the wizard step. Anything matching by text content breaks on plain replay. Auto-Heal sees the rename in context and continues.

Doesn't help: actual product bug

The form is broken — a required field always rejects valid input, an API endpoint returns 500, the redirect goes to the wrong page. Auto-Heal will try to recover and won’t be able to; the test stays Failed. This is the correct outcome — Auto-Heal is not “make tests pass”. It’s “absorb UI drift, surface real bugs.”

Doesn't help: feature was removed

The flow the test was checking has been intentionally deleted (rather than refactored). The test should be removed from your suite, not healed. Auto-Heal can’t tell intentional removal from regression — it’ll fail the test, and you can clean up.

Doesn't help: long auth/onboarding gate

If the test only runs after a multi-step login + onboarding sequence and that sequence itself broke, recovery work hits the broken gate before reaching the actual flow. Use Auto-Auth for backend tests; for UI tests, make sure your test account stays in a known state.

Free vs Pro Behavior

	Free plan	Starter / Standard
Plain rerun
Rerun all
Scheduled reruns
Auto-Heal toggle	Visible, locked, leads to upgrade	Toggleable per rerun
Recovery on UI drift

Why the toggle is shown to free users. Hiding the auto-heal toggle entirely from free-plan users would make the feature invisible — they’d never discover it. We render it locked with a Pro badge plus the helper copy that explains what they’d unlock by upgrading. The same pattern applies on the schedule creation page.

Cost and Credits

Auto-Heal only consumes extra credits when recovery actually does work — i.e. when your test would otherwise have failed and Auto-Heal saved it. Tests that pass on plain replay cost the same as a regular rerun; nothing extra is billed.

Realistic napkin math: if your nightly schedule has 50 tests and historically 5 fail per night because of UI drift, opt-in auto-heal costs extra only for those 5 recoveries. The other 45 are pure replay cost. Compared to triaging 5 false-positive failures by hand each morning, Auto-Heal usually pays for itself within a week of cadence.

The Credits Remaining counter on your wizard / billing page reflects all of this. There’s no separate “auto-heal credits” budget — recovery deducts from your normal monthly credit allowance.

Why Frontend-Only

Auto-Heal applies only to UI (frontend) tests. Backend tests don’t need it — they run by issuing HTTP requests to your API, which doesn’t drift in the same way a UI does. Routes don’t subtly change without an explicit API version bump.

When backend tests fail on rerun, the cause is almost always one of these — and the right tool is the corresponding feature:

Endpoint behaves differently

A real bug. Investigate via the test detail page — the failing assertion plus the recorded request/response usually tells you what changed.

Auth token expired

Configure Auto-Auth so a fresh token is fetched before every run.

Required fixture was deleted

Check Auto Cleanup and your dependency chains — a producer’s record may have been removed before its consumer ran.

Edge Cases & Troubleshooting

Auto-Heal recovered the test but I want to know what changed

Open the test detail page and look at the Steps panel inside the Overview tab. Steps that were re-decided during recovery are flagged. Your saved test stays the persisted source of truth — Auto-Heal doesn’t overwrite it unless you explicitly save updates (currently a manual operation).

The test always fails on rerun, even though I just regenerated it

Rerun replays the saved test. If you regenerated through Refining or a fresh generation, the saved version may be stale relative to your latest plan. Try a regular Run (not Rerun) to overwrite the saved artifact, then Rerun.

My scheduled run uses auto-heal but I'm not on a Pro plan anymore

The schedule’s Enable auto-heal flag stays saved on the schedule, but your tier is re-checked on every run. If you’ve downgraded, scheduled runs still execute as plain reruns. Re-upgrade and the next run picks up Auto-Heal again automatically.

Can I auto-heal an integration (multi-step) UI test?

Yes — recovery covers the entire step sequence, not just the failing step. Steps that still work get reused; broken steps get re-decided in context.

The auto-heal toggle is locked even though I just upgraded

The tier check uses the value from your most recent Plan & Billing change. If you just upgraded, refresh the page so it picks up your new plan. If it’s still locked after a refresh, log out and back in.

What happens if recovery itself errors out (network, transient failure)?

The test is marked Failed with the last-known error in the Error / Trace / Fix tabs of the test detail page. Re-click Rerun to try again. If recovery consistently errors out on a test, contact support with the test ID.

Where to Go Next

Rerun

The rerun surfaces themselves — single, batch, scheduled

Schedule Monitoring

Set up nightly schedules with auto-heal turned on

Comparing Runs

Diff two runs to see what changed step-by-step

Subscription Plans

Unlock auto-heal on Starter or Standard