What Is Flaky Test Quarantine?
Flaky quarantine is the practice of moving tests known to fail intermittently into a separate, non-blocking lane so their unreliability does not red-light the whole pipeline. The quarantined tests usually still run and report, so the flakiness is tracked, but their result does not gate merges until they are fixed. It is a pressure valve, not a permanent home.
Why it matters
A single flaky test that randomly fails erodes trust in CI and tempts developers to ignore or blindly re-run red builds, which masks real failures. Quarantine keeps the main signal trustworthy while the flaky test is investigated, but it needs a policy to fix or delete quarantined tests so the quarantine does not grow forever.
Related concepts
- Keeps the main pipeline signal trustworthy
- Quarantined tests still run but do not gate merges
- Needs a policy to fix or remove them over time
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