Synthetic Monitoring Glossary: Key Terms and Definitions

A reference guide to the most important terms in synthetic monitoring, browser automation, and application reliability. Each term links to the relevant deep-dive article for further reading.

A

Alert Policy

A set of rules that define when and how your team is notified about check failures. Policies include trigger conditions, notification channels, and escalation rules. → Configuring Alerts

API Monitoring

Testing backend endpoints (REST, GraphQL) for correctness, response time, and availability using automated HTTP requests. supaguard supports API monitoring through Playwright's request API. → API Monitoring Guide

Assertion

A statement in a test script that verifies an expected condition. If the assertion fails, the check is marked as failed. Example: await expect(page.getByText("Welcome")).toBeVisible().

B

Browser Check

A synthetic monitoring check that uses a real browser (Chromium) to simulate user interactions. Browser checks can click buttons, fill forms, navigate pages, and verify visual elements. → What is Playwright?

Browser Context

An isolated browser session in Playwright. Each context has its own cookies, storage, and cache, preventing interference between tests.

Browser Run

The unit of measurement for supaguard billing. One browser run equals one execution of a check script. → How Credits Work

C

Check

A monitoring task in supaguard. A check consists of a Playwright script, a schedule (how often it runs), selected regions (where it runs), and an alert policy. → Getting Started

CI/CD Integration

Running synthetic checks as part of your deployment pipeline to verify production health after every release. → CI/CD Integration Guide

Credits

The billing unit in supaguard. Credits are consumed per browser run. Plans include monthly base credits, and additional credits can be purchased as top-ups. → How Credits Work

D

Deep Debugging

supaguard's suite of diagnostic tools available for every failed check: video recordings, network traces (HAR), and Playwright traces. → Debugging Failures

Degraded

A failure classification severity level indicating performance issues or soft failures that don't completely block users. Less urgent than Critical. → Failure Classification

E

End-to-End Testing (E2E)

Testing a complete user flow from start to finish in a real browser, simulating actual user behavior. Synthetic monitoring applies E2E testing to production environments on a schedule.

Environment Variables

Securely stored key-value pairs injected into check scripts at runtime. Used for credentials, API keys, and configuration values. → Environment Variables

Escalation

The process of routing unresolved alerts to higher-priority channels (e.g., from Slack to PagerDuty) after a defined delay. → Configuring Alerts

F

Failure Classification

supaguard's AI-powered system that categorizes check failures into Critical, Degraded, or Healthy—enabling smarter alerting and prioritization. → Failure Classification

False Positive (False Alarm)

An alert triggered by a transient issue (network blip, CDN hiccup) rather than a real application problem. supaguard's Smart Retries dramatically reduce false positives. → Smart Retries

Flaky Test

A test that sometimes passes and sometimes fails without any code changes. Often caused by timing issues, unstable selectors, or network variability.

G

Global Network

supaguard's distributed infrastructure of monitoring nodes across multiple geographic regions (US, Europe, India). Checks can run from any or all regions. → Global Network

H

HAR File

HTTP Archive format. A JSON file that captures all HTTP requests and responses during a browser session, including headers, payloads, and timing data. Used for network debugging.

Healthy

A check status indicating the test passed successfully and the monitored flow is working correctly.

L

Locator

A Playwright method for finding elements on a page. Resilient locators (role-based, test-ID-based) resist UI changes better than CSS selectors. → Resilient Locators

M

Monitoring-as-Code (MaC)

An approach where monitoring configuration is defined in code files and version-controlled. supaguard offers an AI-native alternative that reduces maintenance overhead. → MaC vs AI-Native

Multi-Region Verification

Running a check from multiple geographic locations to confirm whether a failure is global or localized. Core component of Smart Retries.

P

Playwright

An open-source browser automation framework by Microsoft. supaguard uses Playwright as its testing engine for all synthetic checks. → What is Playwright?

R

Real User Monitoring (RUM)

Observability based on data collected from actual user sessions. Complementary to synthetic monitoring—RUM is reactive (requires real traffic), while synthetic is proactive. → Synthetic vs RUM

Recovery Alert

A notification sent when a previously failing check starts passing again. Helps teams know when issues are resolved without checking the dashboard.

Retry

Re-executing a failed check to confirm the failure. supaguard's Smart Retries re-run from a different geographic region for higher confidence. → Smart Retries

S

Selector

A string pattern used to identify HTML elements on a page. Types include CSS selectors, XPath, role-based locators, and test IDs. → Writing Playwright Tests

Smart Retries

supaguard's proprietary system for eliminating false alarms. When a check fails, it is immediately re-run from a different geographic region. Alerts are only sent if the failure is confirmed from multiple locations. → Smart Retries

Synthetic Monitoring

A proactive monitoring strategy that uses automated scripts to simulate real user behavior against production applications. Detects issues before users encounter them. → What is Synthetic Monitoring?

T

Trace (Playwright Trace)

A detailed recording of every action performed during a Playwright test, including DOM snapshots, console logs, and network activity. Used for step-by-step debugging. → Debugging Failures

U

Uptime Monitoring

Basic availability monitoring that checks whether a URL returns a successful HTTP response. Less comprehensive than browser-based synthetic monitoring but faster and lighter.

V

Visual Regression

Detecting unintended visual changes in a web application by comparing screenshots across test runs. supaguard supports AI-powered visual regression analysis. → Visual Regression AI

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Next Steps

• What is Synthetic Monitoring? — Deep dive into the core concept
• Getting Started — Create your first check
• Playwright Guide — Master the testing framework