Testing

frites has two gates you run from the repo root: a typecheck and a unit-test suite. For prerequisites and the surrounding dev loop, see local-development.md.

Typecheck

pnpm typecheck

This runs tsc --noEmit against the whole workspace using the root tsconfig.json (strict mode, ES2023/ESNext, Bundler resolution). It compiles packages/*/src, packages/*/test, apps/*/src, apps/*/test, and eval/**, resolving the @frites/* packages from source via the paths aliases, so no build is needed first.

Unit tests

pnpm test          # vitest run (one-shot)
pnpm test:watch    # vitest (watch mode)

Tests run under Vitest in a Node environment (vitest.config.ts). The include globs are:

packages/*/test/**/*.test.ts
apps/*/test/**/*.test.ts

Like the typecheck, the runner aliases @frites/core, @frites/isolation, and @frites/agents to each package's src/index.ts, so tests exercise source directly without a build step.

Where tests live

Each package keeps its tests in a sibling test/ directory:

Location	Test files (examples)
packages/core/test	engine.test.ts, agent-loop.test.ts, answer-council.test.ts, synthesis.test.ts, config.test.ts
packages/agents/test	completion-stream.test.ts, env-sandbox.test.ts, pricing.test.ts, runner-usage.test.ts, timeout.test.ts
packages/isolation/test	worktree.test.ts
apps/gateway/test	logger.test.ts, progress.test.ts
apps/mcp/test	runtime.test.ts

Current count

The suite currently passes 126/126 unit tests (per the project README's status). These are fast, host-independent unit tests. They do not spawn real child agents.

Live smoke tests

Unit tests cover the engine, config, oracle, and telemetry without hitting real models. To validate end-to-end behavior, frites is also exercised with live smoke tests against a real claude client. For example, a real claude client pointed at the gateway driving a fix end-to-end, and (for worktree mode) an opt-in synthesis smoke that runs two inexpensive children against a tiny fixture repo.

When to run them. Live smoke tests are metered: each turn fans out to real child CLIs that draw on your subscriptions. Run them only when you need end-to-end confidence (after changes to the gateway transport, the agent runners, the worktree/oracle path, or synthesis), not on every edit. Keep them opt-in and small (a fixture repo, the cheapest children) so a routine pnpm typecheck + pnpm test stays free and fast as the default loop.

For the larger metered harnesses (the value-gate A/B and the bench matrix), see evaluation.md.