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Smoke Test - CI/CD Glossary Definition

A smoke test is a quick, shallow check that the most critical functionality works at all, run right after a build or deploy. The name comes from hardware: power it on and see if it smokes.

Why it matters

A post-deploy smoke test catches gross failures (the app will not start, the homepage 500s) in seconds, before a fuller test suite or real users hit the new version. It is a common deployment gate.

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