AutoMax

Glossary

Terms used throughout the AutoMax documentation, defined once.

TermDefinition
ProjectA directory under projects/ with an automax.project.yaml. It owns features, steps, page objects, data and environments for one application.
EnvironmentA named target (local, staging, ...) described by envs/<env>.yaml: base URLs, API authentication, pool size, locale, overrides.
LayerThe kind of scenario: ui (browser), api (HTTP only, no browser), hybrid (both), recorded (Playwright specs produced by the recorder). Selected by tag and run as separate Playwright projects.
Suite tag@smoke, @regression, @sanity (configurable). Exactly one per scenario. Drives the screenshot policy and the CI gate.
Playwright projectThe unit Playwright runs. AutoMax generates one per project × layer × browser, named <slug>--<layer>--<browser> (or <slug>--api).
FingerprintA 16-character hash of project, feature path, scenario name, example index and layer. Stable across runs and browsers; names result directories and deduplicates issues.
RunOne invocation of automax run, identified by a UUID v7 runId, with a directory under .automax/runs/<runId>/.
Run directoryWhere a run's manifest, NDJSON messages, HTML report, dashboard and per-scenario artifacts live.
AttemptOne execution of a scenario; retries create additional attempts. Scenarios are counted, attempts are kept.
DatasetA named data source declared under data.sources in the project YAML: CSV, JSON, YAML, a database table, faker factories or OpenAPI examples.
User poolA dataset of accounts partitioned by role. A worker leases one user per role; leases carry a TTL.
Storage statePlaywright's saved cookies and local storage for a logged-in user, cached per pool user under .auth/.
HealA locator resolution that failed on the primary locator and succeeded on a scored alternative. Every heal is recorded.
Screenshot policyThe rule, chosen by suite tag, for how many screenshots a scenario takes: off, on-failure, scenario, step, visual.
NDJSONNewline-delimited JSON. Cucumber's message format, written by the run and ingested into the database.
ProposalA set of file changes produced by an agent, stored under proposals/<id>/ and applied only after review.
MCPModel Context Protocol. AutoMax exposes an MCP server and can consume other MCP servers (for example Playwright MCP).
ScopeA permission string such as runs:write attached to API tokens and roles.
API tokenA free, scoped, revocable bearer token (amx_...) for the HTTP API and the MCP HTTP transport.