Field notes · Oct 2026
Every page, opened before every deploy
Save real page data in tests, replay it offline in headless Chrome, fail on any error.
Type checks and unit tests don't catch a page that throws when real data arrives. So before a deploy we open every page in headless Chrome.
A test visits each page and saves the data it would send. A script serves the built frontend and that saved data from disk, blocks every other host, and opens each page. It fails on an uncaught error, a console error, or a call to our error reporter.
Nothing leaves the machine and nothing needs a login, so it runs anywhere.
Where it falls short
It only knows the data the test gave it. A test stub that doesn't match the real page will pass. We learned that one the hard way.