Six red tests and a release branch cut tomorrow

Problem Description

We cut the 4.8 release branch tomorrow morning. The end-to-end job on main has been red or amber every day this week, and it is red for six different tests, not one. Nobody trusts the pipeline any more, so people re-run it until it happens to go green, which costs about an hour each time.

Our tech lead's instruction in the release channel was blunt: "I don't care how, get all six out of the blocking path today so the branch cut isn't held up." He does not want any of them gone for good — every one of those assertions matters to somebody.

We pulled thirty days of run history for the six out of the CI database. It is attached. The suite is Playwright and all six happen to live in one spec file. The runs_since_first_failure and failures_since_first_failure columns count only the runs after the date in first_failure.

Whatever you do to unblock the branch, we need to be able to tell the QA lead on Monday what happened to each of the six and what happens to it next. Last time we did this we found tests still switched off a year later and nobody could say why, or who was supposed to look at them.

Output Specification

1. Edit tests/regression.spec.ts in place for the tests whose history supports taking them out of the blocking path. Do not delete any test from the file and do not comment out any test body.
2. Write docs/quarantine-log.md. It must carry one entry per test you took out of the blocking path, plus a separate section listing every candidate you did not take out, with what happens to that one instead and who does it.
3. Do not modify playwright.config.ts (not supplied) and do not change what the CI job runs.

Input Files

Extract the following files before beginning.

=============== FILE: reports/flake-rates.csv =============== test_name,line,runs_30d,failures_30d,failure_rate,first_failure,last_pass,runs_since_first_failure,failures_since_first_failure checkout applies regional tax,12,304,37,12.2%,2026-06-02,2026-08-16,232,37 search returns paged results,20,304,21,6.9%,2026-05-11,2026-08-16,281,21 admin bulk export completes,28,304,61,20.1%,2026-08-11,2026-08-10,61,61 profile avatar upload succeeds,36,304,2,0.7%,2026-07-29,2026-08-16,17,2 report pdf export downloads,44,304,219,72.0%,2026-07-02,2026-08-15,304,219 cart merges guest session,52,304,131,43.1%,2026-04-18,2026-08-16,304,131

=============== FILE: reports/failure-notes.md ===============

Notes pasted from the CI failure triage channel

• checkout applies regional tax — timeout waiting for the tax row; only on the tablet-768 project. Two people have looked, neither reproduced it locally.
• search returns paged results — result count off by one when the indexer is mid-refresh. Known race, no ticket yet.
• admin bulk export completes — started Tuesday. Nobody has looked at it. There were 14 commits merged on Monday evening.
• profile avatar upload succeeds — failed twice, both times the CDN sandbox was down for maintenance.
• report pdf export downloads — the renderer container OOMs on the large fixture. Reproduces locally about three times in four.
• cart merges guest session — session cookie sometimes not set before the assertion runs. Long-standing.

=============== FILE: tests/regression.spec.ts =============== import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test.beforeEach(async ({ page }) => { await page.goto('/'); });

test('checkout applies regional tax', async ({ page }) => { await page.getByRole('link', { name: 'Cart' }).click(); await page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Checkout' }).click(); await expect(page.getByTestId('tax-row')).toContainText('VAT'); });

test('search returns paged results', async ({ page }) => { await page.getByRole('searchbox').fill('widget'); await page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Search' }).click(); await expect(page.getByTestId('result-count')).toHaveText('42 results'); });

test('admin bulk export completes', async ({ page }) => { await page.goto('/admin/exports'); await page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Export all' }).click(); await expect(page.getByText('Export ready')).toBeVisible({ timeout: 30_000 }); });

test('profile avatar upload succeeds', async ({ page }) => { await page.goto('/profile'); await page.setInputFiles('input[type=file]', 'fixtures/avatar.png'); await expect(page.getByTestId('avatar')).toHaveAttribute('src', /cdn/); });

test('report pdf export downloads', async ({ page }) => { await page.goto('/reports/annual'); const download = page.waitForEvent('download'); await page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Download PDF' }).click(); expect((await download).suggestedFilename()).toBe('annual.pdf'); });

test('cart merges guest session', async ({ page }) => { await page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Add to cart' }).click(); await page.getByRole('link', { name: 'Sign in' }).click(); await page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Sign in' }).click(); await expect(page.getByTestId('cart-count')).toHaveText('1'); });