Skip to main content
Before Mini writes scenarios for an app it doesn’t know yet, it explores it: it installs your build on a device, walks from screen to screen, and draws a map of what it found. This page covers when Mini explores, how to watch it, and how to read the map.

​
When Mini explores

Mini needs a copy of your app to explore: upload a build, connect the repository it builds from, or give it the URL of your web app. When an area needs a signed-in user, Mini signs in with a test account.

​
During onboarding

Onboarding has two steps in the app sidebar: Exploration, then Scenarios.
1

Mini starts exploring

When you add an app, Mini starts exploring as soon as it has a build. Without one, the page says Mini needs a build of your app: add a build, or connect the repository Mini builds from, and it starts on its own. When Mini needs something first, like how to sign in, it says Mini has a question before it starts: click Answer in the chat.
2

The map fills in

New screens land on the map as Mini finds them. You can leave the page: the exploration keeps going, and the map is there when you come back.
3

Steer it if you want

Click a screen and choose Explore from here, or click a way on Mini hasn’t taken yet and choose Explore this way or Explore everything. Each choice writes the request in the chat for you to send.
4

Move on to scenarios

When the map covers the app, click Review scenarios next to Happy with the map?. Nothing is locked: you can switch back to Exploration at any time.
On the Scenarios step, the board says The map is ready to draft from. Click Draft all scenarios and Mini drafts scenarios for the journeys on the map, using everything else it knows about your app. Each new scenario is a draft until Mini has checked it on a device, then onboarding ends with your first regression run. See the quickstart for the whole flow.

​
Watch Mini explore

While Mini explores, its device sits in a corner of the map, labeled Exploring now with a live dot. Enlarge it to follow each tap, Shrink it back, or Hide it to give the map the room. The exploration keeps running either way. In a Workbench draft, the exploration shows as a row above the chat box. Click Watch it live to see the device, or Stop to end the exploration.

​
Read the map

The map is a tree that starts from the screen your app opens on. Each box is a screen Mini stood on, and each line is the action that took it from one screen to the next. Click a screen to open its card:
  • Leads to and Reached from: the screens on either side, one click away.
  • What it takes to stand on the screen, for example being signed in.
  • A way on marked Failing: Mini’s last try at that action didn’t work.
  • When Mini couldn’t get past a screen, the reason, and Open what is blocking it when a question of Mini’s is in the way.
  • No capture when Mini never got a picture of that screen.
Once onboarding is over, the Exploration step hands over to Tests. If your workspace has it, the map stays readable on its own Map page. That page is read-only: screen cards show where each screen leads and what leads to it, without the buttons that ask Mini something.

​
What the map feeds

  • Scenario drafts. Mini writes scenarios for the journeys it actually walked, with the screen names it saw. That’s why a scenario drafted after an exploration uses your app’s own words.
  • Coverage questions. A short map shows where Mini stopped. A long chain with no branches usually means it never got out of a funnel like sign-up; a wide, shallow tree usually means it never got past sign-in. Both are worth fixing before you trust the coverage, often with a test account or an answer to Mini’s question.

​
From the CLI

The minitest CLI reads the same map, which helps a coding agent write scenarios for screens that exist:
Add --platform ios to read one platform’s map. An empty list means no exploration has run on a build of this app yet. See Coding agents to set up the CLI.

​
Next steps

Workbench

Where Mini’s drafts are checked on a device before they reach your suite.

What a scenario is

The shape of the scenarios Mini drafts from the map.

Test accounts

Let Mini explore past your sign-in.

Ask Mini

Ask for a new area to be covered, in plain language.