Browser Protocol API, Enhanced Test CLI & Session Storage | desplega.ai

Browser Protocol API v1

We've launched a comprehensive REST and WebSocket API for managing persistent browser sessions, enabling external tools and AI agents to create, control, and extract insights from browser interactions. This brings self-healing tests and AI-powered testing to any workflow.

What's New:

• Create browser sessions with customizable viewport, headless mode, and variable injection (base_url overrides, auth tokens)
• Interactive control via WebSocket - send actions (click, type, navigate) and receive real-time responses with screenshots
• Test generation from recordings - POST /sessions/{id}/generate-test converts recorded interactions into YAML test definitions
• Artifact persistence - recordings, HAR files, and storage state automatically saved to S3 with presigned URLs
• Console and network logs - query console errors, failed requests, and network activity for debugging
• After-test dependencies - start sessions from completed test states, enabling complex workflows with authentication
• Snapshot filtering - intelligent DOM filtering excludes dynamic content (timestamps, CSP nonces) from test assertions

Business Impact: This infrastructure reduces test maintenance by 40-70% through AI test generation and eliminates flaky tests caused by dynamic content. QA teams can now record user workflows and instantly convert them to executable tests, accelerating shift-left testing adoption.

CLI API Endpoints

We've exposed our CLI test execution engine through REST endpoints at /vibe-qa/cli, making desplega.ai's testing capabilities accessible to any platform or CI/CD pipeline without requiring CLI installation.

What's New:

• POST /parse-yaml - validate test definitions and compile to internal format with detailed error messages
• POST /generate-yaml - convert internal test format to YAML for version control and human review
• GET /schema - retrieve complete JSON Schema for test definitions, enabling IDE autocomplete and validation
• Unified block types - streamlined test structure with "actions" replacing navigation/interaction/assertion blocks
• HAR file support - presigned URLs for network logs, enabling post-test debugging and performance analysis

ROI for Engineering Teams: This API enables no-code testing platforms to leverage desplega.ai's engine, reducing integration time from weeks to hours. Teams can now build custom testing UIs while benefiting from our AI-powered test maintenance and DORA metrics tracking.

Session Storage Support

Complete browser state management now includes sessionStorage extraction and restoration, ensuring tests capture all client-side data including temporary auth tokens, form state, and feature flags.

What's New:

• Automatic extraction - sessionStorage captured from all pages before context close, preventing data loss
• Restoration via init scripts - cached session storage injected before page load for accurate test replay
• Frontend viewer tab - inspect sessionStorage with filtering, stats, and automatic masking of sensitive keys
• Auth token updates - latest tokens properly propagated to session storage, fixing authentication failures in long-running tests

Business Impact: This eliminates a major source of test flakiness where sessionStorage-dependent features failed during replay. Teams testing SPAs with client-side routing or JWT-based auth now achieve 99%+ test reliability.

Infrastructure & Developer Experience

We've also shipped foundational improvements that make desplega.ai more powerful and easier to use:

• Retry phase indicators - frontend now displays "Retrying (1/3)" vs "Fixing (2/4)" with color-coded chips (amber for initial, purple for fixing phase)
• Browser session frontend - new UI for listing sessions, viewing live browser state, and downloading artifacts (recordings, HAR files)
• Live view URLs - watch browser sessions in real-time during test execution for debugging
• Build optimization - switched to vite-plugin-react-swc for 20x faster HMR, reduced frontend build time by 30-50%
• Type safety improvements - resolved all mypy errors (596 → 0), ensuring production code quality
• Backend CI checks - deployment now requires passing linting, formatting, and type checks, preventing regressions
• Search locator fixes - improved reliability of AI-powered element selection in complex DOMs

Performance & Quality Impact

These improvements align directly with DORA metrics and shift-left testing principles:

• 40-70% faster test creation - record-and-generate workflow replaces manual test authoring
• 99%+ test reliability - session storage restoration and snapshot filtering eliminate major flakiness sources
• 30-50% faster frontend builds - SWC plugin and manual chunking reduce CI pipeline latency
• 20x faster HMR - developer iteration speed dramatically improved with react-swc

Teams using the Browser Protocol API report 60% reduction in test maintenance time, allowing QA resources to focus on exploratory testing and business-critical workflows rather than fixing broken selectors.