Automated Checks

A deliberate rename of Beck’s Automated: the suite should run and judge itself without a human: self-checking, machine-runnable, wired into CI. Fowler calls the result self-testing code; Meszaros makes “Fully Automated Test” his first goal of test automation.

The rename concedes the context-driven point (Testing vs. Checking): what runs unattended is checking. This is a property of the checks in a suite, not a claim that testing (the exploratory, questioning human activity) has been automated.

Part of Test Desiderata.

Measuring: binary in practice. Either a single command runs the suite and returns a verdict, or it doesn’t. Watch for humans in the loop: manual setup steps and eyeball-verified output are the violations.