nw-test-organization-conventions

Structure test directories by mapping architecture boundaries to test tree organization, using a decision tree to determine placement for modular monolith or microservices architectures. This reduces ambiguity by ensuring the test tree mirrors architectural boundaries.

Adopt a hybrid pattern to organize unit, integration, and e2e tests by type first, then by feature. This provides language-agnostic conventions to support IDE navigation and boundary contracts across large projects.

Your test tree fails to reflect clean architecture boundaries because the organization is wrong if developers cannot infer the architecture from the test tree alone. Test directory structure must encode architectural boundaries to reduce ambiguity.

Yes, this test organization approach works with vertical slice and event-driven architectures. It provides an architecture-to-organization decision tree applicable across Hexagonal/Clean, Vertical Slice, Modular Monolith, Microservices, CQRS, and Layered patterns.

Yes, you can use feature-colocation for integration tests across different architectural patterns. The conventions clarify best practices for where to place tests and how to mirror, feature-colocate, or hybridize test trees to support boundary contracts.

You should avoid hybrid test tree organization when your project does not require strict boundary enforcement or when the architecture cannot be inferred from the test tree. If the structure does not reduce ambiguity in large projects, alternative organization is needed.