A green test suite proves less than you think

Short summary

Code coverage metrics hide real defects in autonomous systems. The article identifies five distinct failure modes that coverage-focused testing misses: integration defects, adversarial inputs, concurrency races, cascading failures, and property violations. Each requires dedicated testing strategies.

• •High code coverage can pass while tests check the wrong behavior—line execution ≠ correctness
• •Autonomous agents fail at module seams, not in isolated functions; five testing dimensions catch different failure classes
• •Integration, adversarial, concurrency, fault-injection, and property-based testing must all be employed—no single approach suffices

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