Regression testing

Unit tests with mocked data miss the bugs that only appear with real data at real scale. Ardent lets you run your full test suite, including destructive operations, against an exact copy of production.

How it works

ardent branch create prints a Postgres URL for the new branch. If you need it again, run ardent branch info regression-run (or ardent branch info when that branch is already checked out).

The examples below assume your tests read DATABASE_URL (Django, SQLAlchemy, Prisma, and most pytest setups do). If yours uses a different variable or a .env file, substitute that.

# Branch from production and export the returned URL
DATABASE_URL="$(ardent branch create regression-run --print-url)"
if [ -z "$DATABASE_URL" ]; then
  echo "branch creation did not return a database URL" >&2
  exit 1
fi
export DATABASE_URL

npm test
# or: pytest   (if your tests read DATABASE_URL; some stacks use a different env var)

# Tear it down: production was never touched
ardent branch delete regression-run

One-liner: DATABASE_URL='…' npm test sets the variable for just that command. export is easier when you’ll run more than one.

In CI: create the branch in the job, assign the URL to DATABASE_URL (or wire it into your framework), run your test command, then delete the branch. See CI / CD for a GitHub Actions–shaped example.

What this unlocks

Migration safety: run ALTER TABLE, DROP COLUMN, schema changes against real data before you ship
Destructive queries: DELETE, TRUNCATE, bulk updates; see how much damage they would do — safely
Index validation: try a new index and see if it actually speeds up your real queries
Data-dependent bugs: catch edge cases that only exist in production data, not fixtures

Hand it to an AI agent

With the ardent-cli skill installed, a short ask is enough:

Run a regression test on [describe change] against a real copy of our database.

Without the skill, paste the full directions:

Run a regression test on [describe change] against a real copy of our database.
Create an Ardent branch (ardent branch create), run the tests against it,
report what broke, then delete the branch.

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Regression testing

How it works

What this unlocks

Hand it to an AI agent

​How it works

​What this unlocks

​Hand it to an AI agent

How it works

What this unlocks

Hand it to an AI agent