For a long time, teams treated browser test reliability as a framework problem.
When tests failed, the usual response was to change selectors, add waits, increase retries, or replace one automation library with another. That approach made sense when the main challenge was simply controlling a browser.
Modern applications are different.
A single user journey may now include an identity provider, multi-factor authentication, a streaming AI response, a background API request, a feature flag, a canary deployment, and a frontend rendered differently across several operating systems. The test framework is still important, but it is only one part of the reliability problem.
The bigger question is whether the entire testing system gives the team enough evidence to make a release decision.
