Self-healing is the ability of a test to repair a broken locator or step when the application changes. Many AI testing tools mention it, but not all of them document how it works. This guide shows how the catalogue separates a documented mechanism from a vendor-stated claim, and how to run the same check.
How the catalogue records self-healing
The self-healing fact has three values: documented, vendor-stated and none. Its evidence level follows the same rules as every other fact.
Counts as of 2026-09-24, across 330 tools:
| Evidence level | Tools |
|---|---|
| Documented | 93 |
| Vendor-stated | 49 |
| Not documented | 188 |
Of the 93 documented facts, 90 record a documented mechanism. The other 3 record docs that describe no self-healing.
What a documented mechanism looks like
A documented mechanism is a docs page, help article or release note that explains how healing works. A sentence on a homepage or feature page is a claim, not a mechanism. When we read a docs page, we look for answers to these questions:
- What triggers healing: a failed locator, an exception or a changed element?
- What does the tool try instead?
- Is the repair saved, proposed for review or applied only to that run?
- Is it on by default, and on which plans?
A page does not need to answer all four. It does need to describe healing on a documentation-class page, not only name it.
Documented examples
Sorted by name A-Z.
CloudQA. The CloudQA release notes record that auto-heal was enabled by default for all users in October 2025. Release notes count as documentation.
Cypress. The AI Test Generation guide documents that cy.prompt self-heals a step when the element it needs has changed.
Healenium. The How Healenium works page describes the trigger and the response. When a test fails with a NoSuchElement exception, Healenium runs its algorithm to generate a list of healed locators.
mabl. The mabl help centre has a dedicated article, How auto-heal works.
Documented as none
BugBug records self-healing as none, and the evidence level is documented. The How BugBug AI works page asks whether BugBug self-heals broken selectors at run time. The answer states that "you may still need to update the step manually".
This is the case where a "no" is documented. The docs say it, so the catalogue records it with the source.
Vendor-stated examples
testRigor records self-healing as vendor-stated. The description is on a marketing feature page, AI-Based Self-Healing for Test Automation, not in the testRigor docs.
ProdPerfect records self-healing as vendor-stated. The source is the ProdPerfect homepage, and the site links to no public documentation.
A vendor-stated value is not necessarily wrong. It means we found no documentation page that explains the mechanism.
Not documented examples
Checkly records self-healing as not documented. We found no self-healing feature in the Checkly docs.
TestRail records self-healing as not documented. We found no self-healing feature on the pages we opened.
Numbers stay out of the fact
Some vendors attach figures to self-healing, such as a share of maintenance time saved. Those figures never go into the self-healing fact. They appear only in the vendor claims block on the tool page, verbatim and linked to the page that states them.
A short checklist
- Search the docs, help centre and release notes for "self-healing", "auto-heal", "heal" and "locator".
- Open the page and look for a trigger, a repair action and what the user sees.
- If a documentation-class page describes it, record the URL and the date.
- If only a homepage or feature page mentions it, treat it as vendor-stated.
- If the docs say healing is not supported, record that as documented none.
- If no page mentions it, treat it as not documented.
The documented self-healing feature page lists the tools whose self-healing fact has the value documented. The rules behind every level are on the methodology page.
Sources
- CloudQA release notes
- AI Test Generation | Cypress Documentation
- Healenium Docs: How Healenium works
- mabl help: How auto-heal works
- How BugBug AI works | BugBug Docs
- AI-Based Self-Healing for Test Automation (testRigor)
- ProdPerfect homepage
- Tool pages: CloudQA, Cypress, Healenium, mabl, BugBug, testRigor, ProdPerfect, Checkly, TestRail