Waitless v1.0: The End of Flaky Tests Has Arrived

*(In continuation of the previous blog: waitless: Eliminate Flaky Tests Forever)*

I shipped the first version of waitless with a simple promise: eliminate `time.sleep()` from your Selenium tests forever. The response was incredible. A shoutout from PyCoder's Weekly. And most importantly—real engineers giving valuable comments and improvements to be made.

They told me what was missing:

• "What about WebSocket?"
• "What about Shadow DOM?"
• "My React app re-renders unpredictably. Can waitless understand React?"
• "We have iframes everywhere. Tests fail randomly."

Today, I'm thrilled to announce waitless v1.0.0—and it addresses *all* of these.

WebSocket & SSE Awareness

Modern apps aren't just request-response anymore. They're real-time. WebSockets. Server-Sent Events. Streaming data. Before v1.0, waitless was blind to this. A WebSocket message could trigger a re-render, and waitless wouldn't know about it.

Now? We intercept the WebSocket and EventSource constructors:

from waitless import stabilize, StabilizationConfig

config = StabilizationConfig(
    track_websocket=True,    # Enable WebSocket monitoring
    track_sse=True,          # Enable SSE monitoring
    websocket_quiet_time=0.5 # Wait for 500ms of silence
)

driver = stabilize(driver, config=config)

When you enable WebSocket tracking, waitless:

• Intercepts every new `WebSocket()` connection
• Tracks open/close/message events
• Records the timestamp of every message received
• Waits for a configurable "quiet period" before declaring stability

An active WebSocket with frequent messages? Unstable. A WebSocket that's just idling? Stable—it's just chilling. Server-Sent Events work the same way. Your real-time dashboards finally have test coverage that doesn't rely on `time.sleep(5)`.

Framework Hook Adapters

Here's a truth bomb: DOM mutations alone don't tell the whole story. React batches updates. Angular uses NgZone. Vue has nextTick. By the time the DOM changes, the framework is already two steps ahead.

v1.0 introduces Framework Adapters—plugins that hook directly into framework internals:

config = StabilizationConfig(
    framework_hooks=['react', 'angular', 'vue']
)

iframe Monitoring

You know what's worse than testing a single-page app? Testing an app with iframes. Payment widgets. Embedded content. Legacy integrations. Iframes are everywhere, and they each have their own DOM, their own scripts, their own timing.

config = StabilizationConfig(
    track_iframes=True  # Monitor same-origin iframes
)

• Existing iframes on page load
• Dynamically added iframes via MutationObserver
• Load events for each iframe
• Cross-origin handling (gracefully logged, not crashed)

Performance Benchmarks

"But doesn't all this tracking slow things down?" Fair question. That's why v1.0 includes a built-in benchmark suite:

Enhanced Diagnostics

When things go wrong (and they always do eventually), you need to know *why*. The CLI doctor now shows v1.0 feature status, and diagnostic reports include active WebSocket connections with URLs and states, active SSE connections, and iframe status.

waitless doctor

The Complete v1.0 Config

Here's what full coverage looks like:

from waitless import stabilize, StabilizationConfig

config = StabilizationConfig(
    # Core settings
    timeout=15,
    dom_settle_time=0.1,
    mutation_rate_threshold=50,
    network_idle_threshold=2,
    
    # v1.0 features
    track_websocket=True,
    track_sse=True,
    websocket_quiet_time=0.5,
    framework_hooks=['react'],  # or 'angular', 'vue'
    track_iframes=True,
    
    # Debugging
    debug_mode=True,
)

driver = stabilize(webdriver.Chrome(), config=config)

One line. All signals monitored. No more flaky tests.

By The Numbers

• Featured by PyCoder's Weekly
• Zero breaking changes to the core API
• 100% backward compatible

What's Next?

• Playwright support — Same intelligence, different driver
• Async/await API — For modern Python codebases
• Service Worker interception — The last blind spot
• Visual regression integration — Stability + screenshots

Thank You

To everyone who downloaded waitless, suggested features, and shared it with their teams—thank you. Building developer tools is only meaningful when developers actually use them. Your feedback shaped v1.0.

Get Started

pip install waitless==1.0.0

• PyPI: pypi.org/project/waitless
• GitHub: github.com/godhiraj-code/waitless