Integration Testing: Make Features Work Together in Your AI‑Coded App
An onboarding page can work perfectly, and a dashboard can work perfectly, yet moving from one to the other can fail. That is why integration testing matters. It checks whether the pieces of your app work together the way a person uses them, not just in isolation.
Journeys to test first
- Sign‑up → welcome/dashboard
- Sign‑in → edit something → save → see the change
- Start a trial → see access update → cancel → see access change back
These are the journeys where failure feels most painful to users.
Why AI‑generated apps need this
Vibe‑coding builds fast by generating strong individual pieces. The seams between those pieces—redirects, shared state, and timing—are where silent failures happen. A small set of integration tests catches those failures early so you can ship with confidence.
Keep tests lean and useful
Focus on flows, not implementation details. Write tests that click, type, and submit. Keep them few and stable. When a failure appears, fix the journey first and adjust the test last. This keeps maintenance low while still protecting what matters.
If you want help setting up lightweight, high‑value integration tests for a vibe‑coded app, Spin by fryga can provide a simple starter suite that covers the paths users rely on most.
A starter suite you can adopt this week
- New user completes onboarding and reaches the home screen
- Returning user signs in, edits a simple value, and sees it updated
- Payment trial starts, the app unlocks expected features, and cancellation returns access to the free tier
Keep these three green and most regressions become easy to spot.
Tips for stability
- Use test accounts and stable test data so results are predictable
- Prefer data‑reset steps over re‑creating accounts every run
- Run the suite on each preview build, not only on main
These habits make the tests a safety net rather than a source of noise.
Founder FAQs
How is this different from unit testing? Unit tests check tiny pieces in isolation; integration tests follow a real user journey across pages. For AI‑generated apps and no‑code MVPs, journeys give the most confidence with the least effort.
Do we need to mock everything? No. Prefer running against a lightweight, real environment. If you use services like Supabase or Firebase, set up a test project and reset data between runs so results stay predictable.
Which tool should we pick? Use what your team can maintain. The best test is the one that runs on every preview build and turns red when a journey breaks—then green again as soon as you fix it.
Case study: the disappearing edit
In a vibe‑coded app, editing a record showed a success message but the dashboard still displayed the old value until refresh. An integration test that followed “sign‑in → edit → save → see updated value” failed reliably and pointed to a missing refresh step. The fix took minutes; the test continues to guard the journey as new changes land.
Integration tests pair well with AI app generation because they express intent in user terms. Whether you build with Cursor or Claude Code or prototype quickly in a no‑code tool, these journeys confirm the product still delivers value after each deploy on Vercel or Netlify.