Today, pre-CI validation is inconsistent across tools and often slower than necessary.

This meta issue defines a shared validation contract so humans and LLMs can run fast local checks and then escalate to branch/PR/full validation with predictable behavior.

Goals

• Make fast local validation the default for iteration.
• Standardize change scope and test selection across tools.
• Provide clear escalation from local checks to PR-equivalent and full validation.
• Ensure CI failures include exact local reproduction commands.

Common contract

• --scope <staged|local|branch(default)|full>
• --test-mode <related|affected(default)|all>
• --base-ref <git-ref> (for branch)
• --head-ref <git-ref> (default HEAD)
• --downstream <none(default)|direct|deep>
• --profile <precommit|quick|agent|branch|pr|full>
• --verbose

Scope definitions

• staged: files in the git index.
• local: local changes vs HEAD (staged + unstaged + optional untracked).
• branch: changes since merge-base with base branch.
• full: no scoping.

Test-mode definitions

• related: run tests related to scoped changed files (e.g. Jest --findRelatedTests).
• affected: run tests for projects/packages affected by scoped changes.
• all: run all tests for selected configs/projects.

Profile defaults

1. precommit: scope=staged, test-mode=related, downstream=none
2. quick: scope=local, test-mode=related, downstream=none
3. agent: scope=local, test-mode=related, downstream=none (same as quick)
4. branch: scope=branch, test-mode=affected, downstream=none
5. pr: scope=branch, test-mode=affected, downstream=deep
6. full: scope=full, test-mode=all, downstream=none

Notes

• Explicit flags override profile defaults.
• check_changes should accept this contract and orchestrate underlying tools.
• Tools should also accept the same shared flags when run directly.
• Tool-specific flags remain optional overrides.

Related:

• [CI Feature] Run only jest tests in case files changes are only jest related test files #141641