Story

Hi HN,

I’m looking for recommendations for modern test automation software/frameworks that work well with Python/Go/TS. I wasn’t able to find any from my search and I don’t want to spin up my own test automation infrastructure.

My use case is hardware + firmware testing in a lab environment, where I want to avoid being forced into a specific vendor’s hardware ecosystem.

What I’m looking for:

- Python/Go/TS compatibility (SDK, API, or first-class support)

- Ability to see and query historical test runs (dashboards / trend views of logs and metrics)

- Ability to define custom test sequences/workflows with the ability to run steps concurrently (not just a flat list of tests). Examples: conditional steps, retries, setup/teardown phases, multi-device orchestration (PSUs, DMMs, DAQs, and DUTs)

- Hardware-agnostic / no vendor lock-in: I should be able to swap instruments/devices without rewriting everything or being tied to a proprietary vendor (looking at you NI)

- Ideally: also have a slack integration for initiating runs & notifications of run completions

Questions:

1. Is spinning up my own software architecture the only option? And If you’ve built something like this, what stack worked best (e.g., Robot Framework, pytest + plugins, custom orchestrator, Airflow/Prefect/Temporal, etc.)?

2. Are there purpose-built platforms you’d actually recommend that don’t vendor lock?

3. What do you use for run history + reporting?

4. Any “gotchas” with reliability, scaling to many devices, or maintaining driver layers?

I’m happy to assemble the sequence logic myself if needed, but I’d love to avoid reinventing orchestration and run history/reporting from scratch.