Adding Tests to Your Amazon Q Developer Project

Most Amazon Q Developer projects ship with zero tests. This means every change is a gamble — you might fix one thing and break three others without knowing until a user reports it. Tests are automated checks that verify your app works correctly. They run in seconds and catch bugs before your users do.

Use the AWS SAM CLI to test Lambda functions locally before deploying. Set up LocalStack for integration testing against local AWS service emulators. Use Jest or pytest for unit tests with mocked AWS SDK calls using aws-sdk-mock or moto

Test IAM permission boundaries — verify that Lambda functions only have the permissions they need and can't access unintended resources. Test Lambda timeout handling for operations that may be slow. Test DynamoDB conditional writes for concurrency-sensitive operations

Unit tests check individual functions in isolation — does this function calculate the right total? Integration tests check that multiple pieces work together — does submitting this form save to the database? End-to-end (E2E) tests simulate a real user — can someone sign up, log in, and complete a purchase? Start with E2E tests for your most critical flows, then add integration tests for your API endpoints.

Set up your tests to run automatically on every code push using GitHub Actions or a similar CI service. This way, you'll know immediately if a change breaks something. A basic CI pipeline runs your tests, checks for TypeScript errors, and builds the project. If any step fails, the push is flagged before it reaches production.