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hardAutomation Test Engineer interview question

What is your view on AI-based and self-healing test automation tools in 2026?

What the interviewer wants to hear

  • They can speed up writing tests and suggest locators
  • Self-healing can hide real UI regressions if not reviewed
  • Generated tests still need good assertions and human review
  • Good test design and stable locators still matter
  • Evaluate on reliability, transparency, cost and lock-in

Model answer

AI tools are genuinely useful now. Coding assistants and tools like Playwright's code generation and agent features can draft tests, suggest locators and explain failures, which saves time. Self-healing locators can reduce maintenance when a button's ID changes. But I treat them as helpers, not replacements for test design. A self-healing tool that silently picks a different element can hide a real regression, so every heal must be logged and reviewed. AI-generated tests often click through flows with weak assertions, so they need human review to check that they verify meaningful behaviour. The basics still matter most: testable apps with stable test IDs and roles, independent tests, and the right pyramid. When evaluating a tool, I look at how transparent its decisions are, whether tests stay as readable code in our repo, flakiness in a real trial, cost and vendor lock-in.

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