Write and run trace-based tests against a distributed system using Tracetest

Steps

1. Install Tracetest CLI (tracetest) and run tracetest configure to connect it to a running Tracetest server or Tracetest Cloud endpoint with YOUR_TOKEN
2. Create a test definition YAML specifying: trigger (HTTP request, grpc call, or Kafka message), a pollingProfile (how long to wait for the trace to be complete), and assertions written against span attributes
3. Write assertions using the selector syntax: select a span with a SpanSelector (e.g., span[tracing.system.name = "my-service"] and assert that http.response.status_code = 200 or db.statement contains the expected query
4. Run the test with tracetest run test -f test-definition.yaml and observe the structured output showing which span assertions passed or failed
5. Integrate the tracetest run command into a CI pipeline step after the application under test is deployed to a staging environment with a live trace backend (Jaeger, Tempo, or Datadog APM)
6. Use the test suite feature to chain multiple test definitions so that the output trace ID from one test can be referenced as context in the next