Show HN: Finalrun – Spec-driven testing using English and vision for mobile apps (github.com)
With a vision-based agent, that part actually works well. It can look at the screen, understand intent, and perform actions across Android and iOS.
The bigger problem showed up around how tests are defined and maintained.
When test flows are kept outside the codebase (written manually or generated from PRDs), they quickly go out of sync with the app. Keeping them updated becomes a lot of effort, and they lose reliability over time.
I then tried generating tests directly from the codebase (via MCP). That improved sync, but introduced high token usage and slower generation.
The shift for me was realizing test generation shouldn’t be a one-off step. Tests need to live alongside the codebase so they stay in sync and have more context.
I kept the execution vision-based (no brittle selectors), but moved test generation closer to the repo.
I’ve open sourced the core pieces:
1. generate tests from codebase context 2. YAML-based test flows 3. Vision-based execution across Android and iOS
Repo: https://github.com/final-run/finalrun-agent Demo: https://youtu.be/rJCw3p0PHr4
In the Demo video, you’ll see the "post-development hand-off." An AI builds a feature in an IDE, and Finalrun immediately generates and executes a vision-based test for it verifying the feature developed by AI.
15 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 40.7 ms ] threadUsing vision-based execution instead of brittle XPaths is a great baseline, but moving the test definitions to live directly alongside the repo context is definitely the real win here.
Did you find that generating the YAML from the codebase context entirely eliminated the "stale test" issue, or do developers still need to manually tweak the generated YAML when mobile UI layouts change drastically? Great project!
If not, you have kicked the proverbial can down the road.
We do something similar in our company for web with playwright but facing a lot of flaky tests.
Will check this out
Monorepos have many benefits chiefly being able to commit atomically reduces incidental complexity from drift.
It’s good enough for Google and Facebook!