Synthetic monitoring
Also called synthetic checks, active monitoring
Synthetic monitoring runs scripted checks against a live site on a schedule, from outside, to catch outages and slow pages before real visitors meet them.
A monitor loads a page or replays a short script (log in, search, add to cart) every few minutes from several regions, and alerts when a step fails or takes too long. It answers whether the site is up and fast, around the clock, including when nobody is using it.
Despite the name, it has little to do with synthetic users. The script is fixed and has no persona, so it reports that a page loaded, not whether the person on it could finish what they came to do.
Where Stunt Double fits
Keep your uptime monitor. Checklists on a schedule answer the other question: an actor works through the flow as a user would and reports, with screenshots, whether each requirement still holds.
Related terms
- End-to-end testingEnd-to-end testing runs a scripted path through a whole application, from the interface to the database and back, to check that the parts work together the way a user would meet them.
- UX regression testingUX regression testing checks, after every change, that the flows users depend on still work and still make sense, not only that the code still passes.
- Synthetic usersSynthetic users are AI agents given a persona (a background, goals and constraints) that stand in for real users in research or testing.