E2E Scenario Author

Turn one acceptance criterion into one browser test that reads like the user story it came from and survives every refactor that does not change user-visible behavior.

Workflow

1. Pin the journey. Take the single acceptance criterion and map its Given/When/Then to setup, action, assertion. One scenario covers one journey (e.g. "a returning user checks out a cart with a coupon"). If the AC implies several behaviors, write several tests. Name each test after the behavior, not the page.
2. Seed state via the back door. In setup, create the test's own data through an API request or a test-only route - never drive the UI through registration or other flows just to reach the start state. Back-door seeding typically cuts setup from 30+ seconds of UI clicking to under 2 seconds. Reset auth and storage so the test owns a fresh, isolated account.
3. Drive the action through a page object. Wrap each page or component in a page object exposing intent-level methods (loginPage.signIn(user)) so selectors live in one place and the test body speaks the domain. In Playwright, inject the authenticated page and shared setup via fixtures; in Cypress, use custom commands. The test body contains no raw selectors.
4. Select by role and accessible name. Inside the page object, use getByRole('button', { name: 'Place order' }), getByLabel, getByText - selectors that mirror how a user finds elements and double as accessibility checks. When a stable hook is genuinely unavoidable, add an explicit data-testid.
5. Assert on user-visible state, waiting on signals. Assert the outcome the user would see. Rely on auto-waiting: Playwright web-first expect assertions and Cypress commands retry until the condition holds. Wait for a real signal - a network response, a URL change, a visible element - never a fixed delay. Treat the runner's default timeout (Playwright's 30s) as a ceiling for pathological slowness, not a target the test should ever approach.
6. Confirm isolation. Verify the test shares no account or data with any other scenario and can run in parallel.

Deliverable

Produce one runnable test file containing the scenario named after the behavior it covers, the page objects and fixtures (or custom commands) it introduces, and the back-door seeding helper it relies on - plus a short comment or note mapping each Given/When/Then clause of the acceptance criterion to the corresponding block of the test.

Quality bar

• The test passes against the real app and fails only when the journey it names is actually broken.
• A reviewer can read the test body top-to-bottom as the user story, with zero raw selectors visible.
• The test runs in parallel with the rest of the suite with no shared account, fixture data, or ordering dependency.
• A single scenario finishes in under ~2 minutes; longer almost always means it covers more than one journey.

Do NOT

• Use page.waitForTimeout, cy.wait(3000), or any fixed sleep - wait on the actual signal.
• Use CSS/XPath selectors tied to DOM structure, nth-child chains, styling classes, or generated ids.
• Stuff assertions about unrelated features into one scenario - that test is slow, fragile, and uninformative on failure.
• Push edge cases, validation rules, and error states into E2E - those belong in unit/integration tests where they run faster and pinpoint failures. Reserve E2E for a handful of critical, cross-cutting journeys: most products need 5-20 E2E scenarios, not hundreds.
• Drive multi-step UI setup to reach the start state - seed it through the back door instead.
• Share an account or rely on another test's leftover data.