Local

Sessions don't have to come from CI - you can create them from your machine while developing, using the same CLI and suite as your pipelines.

Setup

1. Install the bdy CLI (requires Node.js v20+):

   bash

   npm i -g bdy
   $

2. Set the suite token in your environment. Copy it from the suite settings:

   bash

   # Linux/macOS
   export BUDDY_VT_TOKEN=bud_vt_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   
   # Windows
   setx BUDDY_VT_TOKEN bud_vt_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   $$$$$

3. Install the discovery browser used to collect page resources after snapshots:

   bash

   bdy tests visual setup
   $

Example: running Cypress locally

With the Cypress plugin configured in your project, run your usual command through the CLI:

bdy tests visual session create "npx cypress run"
$

The command starts the plugin server, runs your tests, collects the snapshots taken with cy.takeSnap(), and creates a session in the suite. Open the suite in Buddy to review the results.

The same pattern works for every framework - only the wrapped command changes:

bdy tests visual session create "npx playwright test"   # Playwright
bdy tests visual session create "mvn test"              # Selenium (Java)
bdy tests visual session create "node test.js"          # Puppeteer / Selenium (JS)
$$$

Scriptless captures from the CLI

You can also create sessions without any tests, straight from the terminal:

bdy tests capture --urls "https://example.com,https://example.com/about"
bdy tests capture --sitemap https://example.com/sitemap.xml --follow
$$

See Scriptless Testing for all capture options.