Quickstart

Get to your first crawl, run, and issue review.

Cofactor tests your app the way a real user would. In this quickstart you'll connect your app, give it a login, and run one simple test end-to-end — so you see the whole loop before you write anything that could fail.

01Add your app

The app or site you're testing is called a application. Add one with its URL — that's the only required field.

Creating a new property — give it a name and URL

Almost every real app keeps the interesting parts behind a login, so this is the step most teams need first. Give Cofactor a set of credentials and it signs in exactly like a user would. Credentials are stored encrypted, and Test login confirms they work before you depend on them.

Cofactor verifying your login credentials sign in correctly

See Credentials & login for SSO, multi-step logins, and rotating secrets.

03Write your first test

Start with a test you know will pass: log in as a user and confirm the dashboard loads. You describe each step in plain language — "acting as" a signed-in user, then an assertion like "the dashboard is visible and loads" — and Cofactor turns it into a repeatable test. No scripting, no selectors.

Beginning with an always-pass test is intentional: your first run goes green, so you learn the loop before you ever debug a failure.

A first test: acting as a signed-in user, then asserting the dashboard loads

04Run it and read the result

Hit Run and watch Cofactor drive your app like a real user. The test ends on a green check, and the run records every step it took — each assertion, a full trace, and screenshots along the way.

That evidence is the point: when a real test fails later, this same view is exactly what turns a failure into an actionable issue with the proof attached.

A passing run — every step green, with assertions and a full trace

05The loop you just learned

You just ran create → run → result. Real tests add assertions that can fail; when one does, Cofactor opens an issue with the trace attached, so you're debugging from evidence instead of a bug report.

06Next steps

Turn this into a smoke suite — the must-pass set you run on every release.
Run a real QA audit — let Cofactor find issues across your app on its own.
CLI Quickstart — the same loop from your terminal and CI.
Concepts — properties, runs, issues, and how they relate.