Testing

Alien provides a testing framework that deploys your stack and runs assertions against it.

Local Testing

The default mode. Runs alien dev as a child process, deploys your stack locally, and exposes the same API as a cloud deployment:

import { deploy, type Deployment } from "@alienplatform/testing"

let deployment: Deployment

beforeAll(async () => {
  deployment = await deploy({ app: ".", platform: "local" })
}, 120_000)

afterAll(async () => {
  await deployment.destroy()
})

test("health check", async () => {
  const res = await fetch(`${deployment.url}/health`)
  expect(res.ok).toBe(true)
})

test("storage works", async () => {
  const res = await fetch(`${deployment.url}/storage-test/data`)
  const body = await res.json()
  expect(body.status).toBe("ok")
})

Local mode uses the same bindings and resource implementations as production — sled for KV/Queue, filesystem for Storage, plaintext files for Vault. Your application code doesn't know the difference.

Cloud Testing

For integration tests against real cloud services, set ALIEN_API_KEY and specify a platform:

const deployment = await deploy({
  app: ".",
  platform: "aws",  // or "gcp", "azure"
})

Cloud mode builds your app, creates a release, provisions real infrastructure, and deploys. Tests run against actual S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, etc.

CI Pipeline

A typical CI setup:

# .github/workflows/test.yml
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: oven-sh/setup-bun@v2
      - run: bun install
      - run: bun test

Local tests require no cloud credentials — they run entirely on the CI machine.

Local Testing

Cloud Testing

CI Pipeline

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