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FlutterProbe

Self-Healing Selectors

FlutterProbe includes a self-healing system that can recover from broken selectors by fuzzy-matching against the live widget tree. When a selector fails to find its target, the AI module tries alternative strategies before giving up.

How It Works

Section titled “How It Works”

When a selector like tap "Submit" fails to find a matching widget, the self-healing module:

  1. Dumps the current widget tree
  2. Runs multiple fuzzy matching strategies against the tree
  3. If a confident match is found, the command proceeds with the recovered selector
  4. The recovery is logged so you can update the test later

Matching Strategies

Section titled “Matching Strategies”

The system uses four strategies, evaluated in order of confidence:

1. Text Fuzzy Match

Section titled “1. Text Fuzzy Match”

Finds widgets with similar text content using string similarity scoring.

  • "Submitt" matches "Submit" (typo recovery)
  • "Sign in" matches "Sign In" (case variation)

2. Key Partial Match

Section titled “2. Key Partial Match”

Finds widgets whose ValueKey partially matches the selector.

  • #login matches a widget with key loginButton
  • #submit matches a widget with key submitForm

3. Type + Position Match

Section titled “3. Type + Position Match”

Finds widgets by type and position when text/key matching fails.

  • Matches the Nth widget of a given type in the tree
  • Useful when widget text has changed but the structure remains the same

4. Semantic Match

Section titled “4. Semantic Match”

Uses semantic labels and accessibility information to find widgets.

  • Matches against Semantics labels in the widget tree
  • Falls back to tooltip and hint text

Configuration

Section titled “Configuration”

Self-healing is enabled by default. The system only attempts recovery when a standard selector lookup fails — there is no performance overhead for passing selectors.

Logging

Section titled “Logging”

When a selector is healed, the test output includes a warning:

  ⚠ Selector "Submitt" healed → matched "Submit" (text_fuzzy, confidence: 0.92)

This tells you which strategy was used and the confidence score, so you can update the test to use the correct selector.

Limitations

Section titled “Limitations”
  • Self-healing adds latency when a selector fails (widget tree dump + matching)
  • Low-confidence matches are rejected to prevent false positives
  • The system cannot recover from structural changes where the target widget has been removed entirely
  • Works best when selectors are close to correct (typos, minor text changes, key renames)