Why is this an issue?

Test and suite titles serve as documentation for your test suite. They appear in test reports, command-line output, and IDE test runners. When titles are empty or contain only whitespace, it becomes difficult to:

• Understand what a test is verifying when reading test output
• Identify which tests failed in CI/CD pipelines
• Run specific tests using pattern matching or filtering
• Navigate your test suite in an IDE

Descriptive titles make your test suite more maintainable and help developers quickly understand the purpose of each test. They are especially important when tests fail, as they provide immediate context about what functionality is broken.

Replace empty or whitespace-only titles with a non-empty title that identifies the behavior under test.

Code examples

Noncompliant code example

it("", async () => {
  const html = await renderMarkdown("**Hello**");
  expect(html).toContain("<strong>Hello</strong>");
}); // Noncompliant

test("   ", async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto("/login");
  await page.getByLabel("Email").fill("sam@example.com");
  await page.getByRole("button", { name: "Send magic link" }).click();
  await expect(page.getByText("Check your inbox")).toBeVisible();
}); // Noncompliant

describe("   ", () => { // Noncompliant
  it("rejects expired invite links", () => {});
});

Compliant solution

it("renders bold markdown as <strong> HTML", async () => {
  const html = await renderMarkdown("**Hello**");
  expect(html).toContain("<strong>Hello</strong>");
});

test("sends a magic link from the login page", async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto("/login");
  await page.getByLabel("Email").fill("sam@example.com");
  await page.getByRole("button", { name: "Send magic link" }).click();
  await expect(page.getByText("Check your inbox")).toBeVisible();
});

describe("invite link validation", () => {
  it("rejects expired invite links", () => {});
});

Resources

Documentation

• Jest Documentation - test(name, fn, timeout)
• Mocha Documentation - BDD interface
• Playwright Documentation - Writing tests