Table of Contents
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary
At Testkube, we're committed to helping development teams eliminate environment parity gaps and accelerate feedback loops. Today we're excited to announce a new capability for developer productivity: the Testkube Local Agent.
The Local Agent is a regular Testkube Runner Agent deployed in a local Kubernetes environment like minikube or kind, licensed for individual developers to use on their local machines. This means developers have access to their entire Teskube Workflow Catalog for local test development and execution, allowing them to run the same tests that execute in CI and staging environments directly on their workstations, The result is faster iteration cycles, elimination of "works on my machine" inconsistencies, and stronger confidence in code changes before they reach shared environments.
Why Local Testing Matters
Testkube environments have always relied on agents to execute test workflows in clusters and CI pipelines. As teams adopt shift-left testing practices and seek tighter developer feedback loops, we're extending that model to individual workstations. Local agents give developers the ability to run production-grade tests locally with full parity to CI environments, unlocking new patterns for teams committed to catching issues early in the development lifecycle.
Instead of maintaining separate local testing setups that drift from CI configurations, you can now run identical test workflows across any environment, from a developer's laptop to production clusters.
Closing the Environment Parity Gap
Every development team knows that environment inconsistencies are a major source of wasted time. Tests pass locally but fail in CI due to different tool versions, missing dependencies, or configuration drift. Debugging these discrepancies often requires lengthy investigations, context switching, and coordination across teams.
By enabling developers to execute the same containerized test workflows locally that run in CI and staging, Testkube eliminates configuration drift and provides immediate, trustworthy feedback. That means issues are caught during development rather than after code review, CI queues are freed from preventable failures, and your delivery pipeline becomes more predictable. For teams practicing continuous integration, where fast feedback is critical, this capability is especially valuable.
Moving Beyond Fragmented Local Testing
The adoption of containerized testing and complex CI/CD pipelines has created a challenge. How do developers validate their work locally without waiting for CI feedback or maintaining their own testing infrastructure?
Many teams have attempted to solve this by creating local testing scripts, maintaining separate test suites for local development, or requiring developers to set up complex local environments. These approaches work to varying degrees, but they introduce maintenance overhead, configuration drift, and fragmented visibility into test results.
At Testkube, with the Local Agent, developers can execute any test workflow defined in the Testkube Catalog directly on their workstation. The agent handles execution in local Kubernetes environments (Docker Desktop, minikube, or kind), manages dependencies consistently, and optionally reports results to the Control Plane for centralized visibility. Workflows run as Kubernetes Jobs with full support for logs, artifacts, parameters, and metrics. And because everything integrates with the Testkube platform, engineering leaders get visibility into test coverage and quality trends across all environments, including local development.
Local testing is just one application of Testkube. Teams use the platform to orchestrate tests across CI/CD, staging, production, and now local development, all with unified workflows, results tracking, and governance.
What Else Is New in This Release
In addition to local agents, we've introduced several other improvements:
- Enhanced Secret Management: Secrets and credentials can now be defined at both the Organization and Environment level and reused across Workflows and WorkflowTemplates, ensuring consistent and secure credential usage.
- Integrated MCP Server: The MCP Server is now available directly from the Testkube Control Plane, enabling IDE and agent integration without local installation or configuration.
- Workflow Iteration: Developers can now iterate on test workflows locally without pushing changes to central repositories, accelerating the test development cycle.
Getting Started
The Testkube Local Agent is available today. Contact sales for licensing information or get started here.
Key Takeaway
Testkube local agents bring production-grade test execution into the developer workflow without the overhead of maintaining separate local testing infrastructure. They make Testkube more flexible, accelerate feedback loops, and give teams true environment parity from laptop to production.
About Testkube
Testkube is a cloud-native continuous testing platform for Kubernetes. It runs tests directly in your clusters, works with any CI/CD system, and supports every testing tool your team uses. By removing CI/CD bottlenecks, Testkube helps teams ship faster with confidence.
Explore the sandbox to see Testkube in action.
