DeckTest quickstart

1Install the app

1. Open DeckTest.dmg from your purchase email (or your personal thanks-page link).
2. Drag Deck Test into Applications, then open it from there.
3. Go to Settings → License, paste the license key from your email, and click Activate. Your license covers 2 Macs — you can deactivate one later from the same screen.

2Load the bridge extension in Chrome

The bridge extension is how your Claude sees and clicks real pages. It ships inside DeckTest and loads into your own Chrome once — it's not on the Chrome Web Store.

1. In Deck Test, open the Setup panel — it shows the extension folder and a Reveal folder button. Keep that window handy.
2. In Chrome, open a new tab and go to chrome://extensions.
3. Turn ON Developer mode — the toggle in the top-right corner of that page.
4. Click the Load unpacked button that appears in the top-left.
5. In the file picker, choose the extension folder Deck Test revealed from the Setup panel a moment ago, and click Select.
6. A new card appears in your extensions list — that is the bridge, loaded from the folder the app showed you. Make sure its toggle is ON.

3Check the pairing

The extension talks to the app through a local bridge, authenticated by a pairing token the app creates on first launch — nothing leaves your machine.

1. Back in Deck Test, look at the status row: Bridge and Extension should both light up green within a few seconds of loading the extension.
2. If Extension stays grey: refresh chrome://extensions, confirm the bridge card's toggle is ON, then restart the engine from Settings → Engine control (Stop, then Start engine) — or simply quit and reopen the app. The extension picks up the pairing token automatically.

4Connect your Claude — Desktop or Code

DeckTest is an MCP server, so it plugs into whichever Claude you already use. The app's Connect Claude screen does this for you — the manual versions are below for reference.

Claude Desktop (one click):

1. In Deck Test, open Connect Claude and click Connect to Claude Desktop. It writes the entry into your Claude Desktop config for you (the config path is shown under the button).
2. Quit and reopen Claude Desktop. DeckTest now appears in Claude's tools menu (the 🔨/connectors icon).

Prefer to edit the config yourself? On the same Connect Claude screen, the Copy config for Claude Code button copies the exact same JSON entry to your clipboard — it works for Claude Desktop too. The release build registers its own bundled engine — there is no Python to install. The shape it produces looks like this (illustrative — the real path is filled in for your install):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "decktest": {
      "command": "/path/shown/by/the/app/decktest-engine",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Merge it into claude_desktop_config.json (macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/), then restart Claude Desktop.

Claude Code (terminal):

Click Copy config for Claude Code in the app to copy the JSON entry with the real engine path for your machine — the same path also goes in the one-liner below, which registers it once, again pointing at the bundled engine (illustrative):

claude mcp add decktest -- /path/shown/by/the/app/decktest-engine mcp

Check it took: claude mcp list should show decktest. That's it — every new Claude Code session can now drive the browser.

5Run your first scenario

Open Claude (Desktop or Code) and ask in plain English:

Test the signup flow at https://staging.my-site.com —
sign up with a fresh email, verify the OTP from the inbox,
and confirm the dashboard loads. Report anything broken.

Claude takes it from there: it opens Chrome, fills the form, waits for the verification email, pulls the code, types it in, and checks each step visually, in the DOM, and in the console + network. You can watch it work in the browser and follow the run log in Deck Test.

Repeatable runs: ask Claude to "save this as a YAML scenario" and it writes the flow to a plain-text file you can re-run before every deploy — same steps, fresh judgment each time.

6Where reports land

• In the chat — Claude summarizes the run: what passed, what broke, and why.
• In Deck Test → Reports — the full QA report for every run: failing steps named, a screenshot captured at the moment of failure, the console error or failed request behind it, and numbered repro steps.
• On disk — each report is a plain folder (markdown + screenshots) under the reports directory shown in Settings, so you can attach it to a ticket or commit it next to your code.