Loading

Run Scout tests

Tip

The commands below work the same way for both UI and API tests.

Scout requires Kibana and Elasticsearch to be running before running tests against a local deployment.

  1. Start servers once

    Start the Kibana and Elasticsearch servers once:

    node scripts/scout.js start-server \
  --arch <stateful|serverless> \
  --domain <classic|search|observability_complete|observability_logs_essentials|security_complete|security_essentials|security_ease|workplaceai>

  2. Run tests as often as you'd like (in a separate terminal)

    And then run tests how often you'd like against the same test servers:

    npx playwright test --config <plugin-path>/test/scout/ui/playwright.config.ts \
  --project local \
  --grep @<location>-<arch>-<domain>
    • Use --project local to target your locally running Kibana/Elasticsearch processes.
    • Use --grep to filter by tag (for example @local-stateful-classic). If you omit --grep, Playwright will run all suites in the config, including ones that may not be compatible with your target.

    We recommend checking out Playwright's UI mode (use --ui).

node scripts/scout.js run-tests \
  --arch <stateful|serverless> \
  --domain <classic|search|observability_complete|observability_logs_essentials|security_complete|security_essentials|security_ease|workplaceai> \
  --config <plugin-path>/test/scout/ui/playwright.config.ts

When Scout starts Kibana and Elasticsearch locally, it saves the server configuration to .scout/servers/local.json and later reads it when running tests.

Directory:

node scripts/scout.js run-tests \
  --arch <stateful|serverless> \
  --domain <domain> \
  --testFiles <plugin-path>/test/scout/ui/tests/some_dir

Comma-separated file list:

node scripts/scout.js run-tests \
  --arch <stateful|serverless> \
  --domain <domain> \
  --testFiles <path/to/one.spec.ts>,<path/to/two.spec.ts>
Warning

All --testFiles paths must fall under the same Scout root (for example, scout/ui/tests vs scout/ui/parallel_tests) so Scout can discover the right config.

By default, Scout starts Kibana and Elasticsearch using the built-in default configuration set. This works for most tests and requires no extra flags. Because all suites that use the default config share the same servers, they can be grouped together in CI, saving both time and resources.

If your tests need specific server-level settings that must be present at boot time (for example, feature flags that cannot be toggled at runtime), you can point Scout at a custom configuration set with --serverConfigSet. Each custom config set requires its own dedicated server instance, so prefer runtime feature flags whenever possible.

node scripts/scout.js start-server \
  --arch stateful \
  --domain classic \
  --serverConfigSet evals_entity_analytics

Or with run-tests:

node scripts/scout.js run-tests \
  --arch stateful \
  --domain classic \
  --serverConfigSet evals_entity_analytics \
  --config <plugin-path>/test/scout/ui/playwright.config.ts

See Feature flags for more details on when and how to use custom server configurations.

Note

For a detailed walkthrough of running Scout tests on Elastic Cloud, see the AppEx QA internal guide (Elasticians only, requires Elastic's internal QA environment).