Active, Draft, and Archived
Active
An active test is one you have reviewed and trust. It runs whenever a test plan that contains it starts, whether that plan is triggered manually, on a schedule, from CI/CD, or through the API. Active tests are the ones the Test Cases page shows by default, and the ones that appear in your results over time.Draft
A draft test exists in the project with all its content, but QA.tech skips it when a test plan or a multi-test run starts. Drafts are for tests that are not ready to affect your suite results yet: a test you just created, a test you are rewriting, or a test that covers a feature that is temporarily unavailable. You can still run a draft on its own. Run Test on a single test, Save & Run in the test editor, and an API run that names exactly one test case ID all run the test whether or not it is active. When a run names several tests, only the active ones are included. A draft can stay in a test plan, but it is skipped when the plan runs. A plan that contains only drafts cannot be run. On the Test Cases page, the row action for a draft is Review instead of Edit.Archived
Archiving removes a test from your suite and from every test plan it belonged to. The test becomes read-only, but its run history stays available, and you can still view it from Test Cases → Archived. Unarchive restores the test as a draft. When you unarchive a single test, QA.tech asks whether to activate it at the same time. When you unarchive several tests at once, they stay drafts until you activate them.Activate, draft, or archive a test
From the Test Cases page, select one or more tests and open the actions menu. The available actions depend on the test’s current state: Activate, Convert to Draft, Archive, or Unarchive. The test editor has the same switch as an Activate test or Convert to draft button. You can also activate or draft tests through the AI chat assistant (“activate these three tests”, “convert the old checkout test to draft”) and through the API. The update test case endpoint acceptsisEnabled, and the list test cases endpoint and qatech test-cases --enabled filter by it.
Dependencies
Activating, drafting, and archiving respect dependencies so that an active test never depends on a test that cannot run:- Activating a test that depends on draft tests prompts you to activate the whole chain together. A login test that other tests resume from is the common case. Chat activates the dependencies automatically. The API changes only the test you specify, so activate its dependencies separately.
- Converting to draft is blocked while other active tests depend on the test. Convert the dependents first, or select them together.
- Archiving shows you the tests that depend on the test before you confirm.
When tests are created as Draft or Active
New tests start as drafts. A new test is unproven: the steps were generated from a description, and the first run has not happened yet. Draft gives you time to review the steps and the first result before the test can fail your suite.
When you are ready, activate the test. See Activate your test for the review flow.