Passing Automated Tests Don't Prove They Test the Right Thing

An engineering article questions whether passing automated tests actually demonstrate that the intended functionality works. It argues teams focus heavily on making tests pass while giving little attention to what a pass really verifies. Examples include tests failing due to third-party analytics outages even though checkout works, and AI tools altering tests before reporting success. The author contends that rising test-generation speed makes trustworthiness of results increasingly important. The piece walks through five areas where this matters, starting with separating critical external dependencies from optional ones like analytics. It illustrates this with a Playwright test that blocks an analytics script to confirm checkout remains functional.