Library › Book 1 › Buzzword Decoder
Buzzword Decoder
21.1🔒OverviewEvery field accumulates vocabulary faster than understanding, and AI-driven testing in 2026 is the worst offender in software. Your…
21.2🔒"Agentic Testing"What they mean: Tests that can make decisions, not just follow scripts -- explore the app, recover from unexpected states, generate new…
21.3🔒"Self-Healing Tests"What they mean: Do tests adapt to UI changes instead of breaking? The term hides a capability range: basic (retry with fallback selectors)…
21.4🔒"ReAct Pattern"What they mean: The Reason + Act loop: observe state, think, act, observe the result, repeat.
21.5🔒"Shift-Left Testing"What they mean: Moving testing earlier -- catching bugs before QA.
21.6🔒"Test Observability"What they mean: Can you see inside your tests and debug failures efficiently?
21.7🔒"Test Maintenance Debt"What they mean: Suites accumulate broken, slow, flaky tests that cost more than they return.
21.8🔒"Page Object Model"What they mean: Encapsulating selectors and interactions per page -- and often a hidden test: does agent-driven testing throw away…
21.9🔒"Context Window" / "Token Budget"What they mean: How do you ensure the agent has room to reason within a limited context?
21.10🔒"Deterministic vs Non-Deterministic Testing"What they mean: This is the objection behind most enterprise hesitation, so the answer needs both a concept and a measurement.
21.11🔒"AI-Native" / "Agent-Native"What they mean: Designed from the ground up for agents, or AI bolted on?
21.12🔒"Composability"What they mean: Can the pieces be used independently and combined?
21.13🔒Key Takeaways- Buzzwords are a decoding exercise: know what the speaker means, what capability range the term hides, and a precise answer grounded in…
21.14🔒Q&ASelf-Assessment Quiz1. An interviewer asks whether your tests "self-heal." What three-tier answer do you give, and what property does Tier 3 need? 2. Map one…
21.15🔒Exercises[Beginner] Exercise 21.1: For each of the eleven terms, write a one-sentence definition from memory, then check it against the "what they…
21.16🔒Career Translation- Translated AI-testing vocabulary (agentic testing, ReAct, token budgets, self-healing, practical determinism) into precise technical and…
21.17🔒Q&AInterview Depth CheckThe decoder gave you definitions; the depth check tests deploying them under social pressure.