Now you can edit a mabl test straight from your AI coding agent without launching your application. With direct editing, your coding agent reads the test's current steps, writes the change you describe, and saves it. Direct editing is supported for browser, mobile, and API tests.
Direct editing from your AI coding agent is ideal for straightforward updates, such as updating an assertion value after a copy change, removing or reordering steps, or applying a fix across every test that shares it. Because your coding agent has the code, the pull request, and the reason for the change in front of it, it can quickly update the affected tests in the same session without launching the application.
Direct editing ships with mabl skills for Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and OpenAI Codex.
When to use direct editing
Direct editing suits changes your coding agent can name exactly, in browser, mobile, and API tests alike: updating an assertion value or expected text, adding or updating a custom find step that uses a locator, removing or reordering steps, creating step groups in browser and mobile tests, converting steps into flows, or repeating a change already made in another test.
Changes that depend on seeing the running application are a different job:
- Browser tests: hand them to the mabl agent, which is best for authoring against an application your coding agent hasn't seen, finding a selector that isn't obvious from the code, or working with dynamic content such as iframes, webviews, and shadow DOMs. Reach for it to repair a test when you don't yet know what changed.
- Mobile tests: the mabl agent doesn't edit mobile tests, so direct editing covers structural changes only. Make anything that requires interacting with your application in the mabl Trainer.
The two work well together. Once the mabl agent has made a change against your real application, use direct editing to apply that same change anywhere else it's needed.
Try it out
mabl skills connect your AI client to the mabl MCP and add skills for project setup, planning, authoring, coverage design, direct editing, and debugging.
- Install mabl skills in your coding agent, following the installation instructions in the repo.
- Authenticate the mabl CLI once with
mabl auth login --auto. The skills install or upgrade the CLI for you if it's missing or out of date. - Ask your coding agent to make the change, naming the branch you want to work on:
"On a new branch called order-update-text, update the confirmation assertion in the checkout test to expect 'Thanks for your order'."
Your agent applies the change exactly as you described it, then validates the test's structure to confirm mabl can read and replay it. Unlike the mabl agent, which runs the test and reworks any steps that fail, direct editing saves the change without running it. Edit on a branch and run the test to validate it works before merging to master.