DEVOPSdigest

SmartBear announced the release of BearQ, the agentic QA system with always-on teammates that autonomously explore, learn, and test applications, delivering continuous application integrity so software works as intended.

BearQ is a foundational part of SmartBear’s product suite, the SmartBear Application Integrity Core™, that spans the SDLC and meets customers where they are in their testing journey. Built for the age of AI-driven development, BearQ transforms software testing from a static safety net into an intelligent, adaptive system that continuously explores and validates real user experiences. BearQ enables application integrity, which SmartBear defines as continuous, measurable assurance that software works as intended with governance to operate at AI speed and scale.

“The AI-driven gap between the speed of software development and the ability to test resulting applications is getting wider, creating a huge potential for application failures that hurt companies, consumers and industries,” said Dan Faulkner, SmartBear CEO. “BearQ will be a critical autonomous exploration and testing solution for the industry to close these gaps and deliver enhanced application integrity. SmartBear’s long history of innovation in software quality and testing makes SmartBear positioned to address this disruption to the SDLC.”

BearQ places application understanding and intent at the center of testing. Rather than relying on predefined test cases or brittle automation scripts, its always-on QA teammates manage the testing lifecycle by discovering how the application works through autonomous exploration, creating and maintaining tests automatically, validating critical user journeys continuously, and reporting on quality, coverage, and risk.

Unlike traditional testing and automation that depend on constant human effort and upkeep, BearQ:

- Is fully autonomous and thinks and tests like a real user. Traditional QA relies on code-based testing, predefined test cases, or automation that can break under pressure. Teams can gain a false sense of confidence from passing tests while bugs slip through production. BearQ explores an application the way a user would. It discovers and prioritizes testing to the most important workflows. This ensures that the experiences that matter actually get tested. BearQ thinks and tests like a real user, validating outcomes rather than just code execution.

- Adapts with your application. Modern applications evolve constantly, but traditional test automation scripts break with these changes. As your application changes, BearQ adapts automatically, ensuring that application changes don’t trigger false alarms. This prevents automation decay and ensures ongoing validation of application integrity.

- Multiplies the impact of any QA team. Manual testing doesn’t scale and automation requires constant care. BearQ acts as always-on teammates that autonomously discover workflows, create and maintain tests, and execute validation. This dramatically expands coverage and allows QA teams to operate at the pace of AI-driven development.

- Provides built-in governance control. BearQ includes structured guardrails, contextual controls, and transparent visibility into agent activity, so teams can define what agents should validate, where they should explore, and how testing aligns with business intent. This allows you to have your agentic QA team explore and test in ways that are consistent with your business practices.

BearQ, initially focused on web applications developed by mid-market SaaS providers, will shortly support API testing, mobile applications, and on-premise environments.