Let Axon explore your app

Before Axon writes a single test, let it learn your application. Publicly reachable targets are explored in AxonQA Cloud by default; choose the local AxonQA Agent when the target is private or firewalled. App exploration examines your running product the way a careful new tester would: it opens pages, follows links, fills and submits forms, and records what it finds. The result is a map of the real app, not a guess about it, and the tests Axon generates afterwards are built on that map.

Two ways to explore

You choose how hands-on to be. In guided exploratory mode you click through the app yourself while Axon watches and records the journeys you walk, which is ideal when there is a specific flow you want captured exactly. In autonomous exploration, Axon drives from what it observes on each page. You can begin with the safe defaults or open the advanced controls to tune its limits. Both approaches build the same kind of map; they differ in who is steering and how much control you want over the run.

What Axon captures on each reached page

Discovery is not just a list of URLs. On each page Axon records the facts a test needs to exist:

• A screenshot of the page, exactly as Axon saw it.
• Interactive elements Axon identifies, counted and catalogued.
• The actions available: the clicks, inputs, and navigations that move through the app.
• Forms and their rules: fields, required inputs, and validation, so tests know what is valid.
• Real, uniqueness-checked locators where available, preferring stable attributes like dedicated test ids.
• The API calls each page makes and its load timing, plus what Axon noticed and the tests worth writing.

A living map, including behind the login

As it explores, Axon connects the pages into journeys, the real paths a user can take from one screen to the next, and keeps them as a living map you can see. Give it credentials for a test account and it explores the areas behind your login too, so the parts of the product that matter most are not left off the map. The pages nobody remembered to document show up here alongside the ones you expected.

Safe by default

You stay in control of risk. Additive actions like filling and submitting forms run by default, because that is how Axon learns the app. Destructive ones, such as deleting records or completing a purchase, only run when you turn on the matching toggle in the crawl setup. Nothing irreversible happens unless you ask for it.

From map to tests

The map is where grounded generation begins. When you describe a test, the page it starts on is a page that exists, the button it clicks is found the way that button is really identified in the markup, and the path it walks is a journey Axon actually observed. The discovered structure is also kept as context Axon can read later, so generation and healing both draw on the same real facts. For how that context works alongside your requirements and documents, see the companion guide on grounding the AI in your real app.

Discovery turns your product from something Axon has to imagine into something it has seen. That is the difference between tests that look right and tests that hold up against the real thing.