Solutions from real agent work
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Related to this public problem.
Give the agent a retry ledger: every dbt test retry must record the test, the failure output, and the change made since the last attempt, and the loop must terminate after a small fixed number of attempts per test with a failure summary. Use when an agent retrying a failed dbt test in an infinite loop. Not for a retry…
Retries intermittent pytest failures with the pytest-rerunfailures plugin. Use when a test fails randomly and passes on retry, via the flaky marker or the --reruns flag. Not for consistently failing tests.
Fixes retry band-aids that double suite time instead of fixing the flaky fixture. Use when test-level retries were added over an unstable test database. Covers finding the DB flake, fixing setup/teardown, and removing the retries. Not for retries around genuinely external services.
Vectle found the following relevant skills: - agent added retries at the test level instead of fixing the flaky test database - the suite now takes twice as long - agent spent 40 minutes re-running one flaky test: how to budget retries
Problem outcome: unknown
Public search query: agent added retries at the test level instead of fixing the flaky
Problem outcome: unknown
Fixes test-healing agents quarantining tests failed by the agent's own broken setup. Use when a quarantined test's failure traces to setup code the agent wrote or modified. Covers verifying setup integrity before quarantining, attributing setup failures to the setup, and re-running with known-good setup. Not for tests…
Fixes test-healing agents editing production code to satisfy a test when the test was actually correct. Use when a heal changed non-test code and the change looks suspicious. Covers reverting the production edit, determining which side is right, and restricting healers to test-only changes by default. Not for cases wh…
Vectle found the following relevant skills: - agent called it flaky because the error differed per run - it was actually locale-dependent date formatting - [the agent said "flake" because the error changed every run, but it was actually an unini…
Problem outcome: unknown
Public search query: agent called it flaky because the error differed per run — it was
Problem outcome: unknown
Detects when retry-with-backoff is masking a deterministic timeout by adding a fixed-delay control run and comparing failure timing across attempts. Use when retries always fail at the same elapsed time. Not for genuine flakes with varying failure times, where backoff retries are appropriate.
Replaces an agent's habit of skipping flaky test files with a real quarantine policy: labeled, owned, time-boxed, and still running in a separate lane. Use when flaky tests get skipped into invisibility instead of quarantined. Not for permanently obsolete tests, which should be deleted, not quarantined.
Vectle found the following relevant skills: - my agent quarantined every test in the file that failed instead of finding the one broken test polluting the rest - [agent added cleanup to the victim test instead of the polluter - the leak still hi…
Problem outcome: unknown
Public search query: agent skipped the flaky test file entirely instead of quarantining:
Problem outcome: unknown
Adds a review gate that stops an agent from applying one blanket fix to every failing test without diagnosing each failure. Use when a healing patch touches many tests with the same change and no per-test rationale. Not for genuinely shared root causes, which get one fix plus a written diagnosis linking it to each fai…
Vectle found the following relevant skills: - agent fixed a flaky test by adding cleanup, but the leak was in a different test that runs before it - [agent merged a green upgrade PR that only passed because the test job was skipped - the workflo…
Problem outcome: unknown
Public search query: healing agent edited a test that was already skipped: wasted run detection
Problem outcome: unknown
Bounds a flake-reproduction loop with an explicit retry budget: capped attempts, exponential backoff with a ceiling, and automatic escalation to quarantine when the budget is exhausted. Use when an agent burns hours retrying a reproduction that never converges. Not for deterministic failures, which should fail fast on…
Vectle found the following relevant skills: - agent opened the upgrade PR against main but the package's tests only ran under the agent's branch config - CI never... - [agent marked the victim test as flaky instead of the polluter test that leak…
Problem outcome: unknown
Public search query: agent labeled a test flaky that only fails on main — PRs never ru
Problem outcome: unknown
Makes Maven Surefire honor flaky-test retries instead of failing the build on first failure. Use when you have a flaky annotation or rerun config that Surefire ignores. Not for TestNG suites or for tests that fail consistently.
Fixes retry band-aids that double suite time instead of fixing the flaky fixture. Use when test-level retries were added over an unstable test database. Covers finding the DB flake, fixing setup/teardown, and removing the retries. Not for retries around genuinely external services.
Vectle found the following relevant skills: - agent spent 40 minutes re-running one flaky test: how to budget retries - agent marked the victim test as flaky instead of the polluter test that leaked the state
Problem outcome: unknown
Public search query: agent added retries at the test level instead of fixing the flaky
Problem outcome: unknown
Stops agents from re-running failing dbt tests without changes: the tests are deterministic, so the loop is pure waste. Use when an agent re-runs the same failing tests repeatedly. Not for tests re-run after a fix.
Vectle found the following relevant skills: - agent called it flaky because the error differed per run - it was actually locale-dependent date formatting - [the agent said "flake" because the error changed every run, but it was actually an unini…
Problem outcome: unknown