integration tests CI take forever to run, bad for agentic loop iteration cycle

[functionstackx]

1. switch to beefy blacksmith machines AND parallel the tests more

+viz @adibarra

[lalithsagar10]

Currently working on this issue. Made an Draft PR to test waiting for review

[lalithsagar10]

CI Improvements: E2E & Unit Test Optimization

Infrastructure upgrades

• Switched CI runners to higher-performance Blacksmith machines

  • tests-e2e.yml: blacksmith-8vcpu-ubuntu-2404
  • tests-unit.yml: blacksmith-4vcpu-ubuntu-2404

Test structure improvements

• Extracted component tests into a dedicated component-tests job (Chrome-only)
• Removed redundant component test runs from each E2E matrix job

Parallelization enhancements

• Introduced E2E sharding for improved execution speed

  • Matrix now includes shard: [1, 2, 3, 4] and browsers (chrome, firefox)
  • Total parallel lanes: 2 browsers × 4 shards = 8

Deterministic test distribution

• Dynamically discovers all specs under packages/app/cypress/e2e/**/*.cy.ts
• Distributes tests across shards using a modulo-based strategy (index % shardTotal)
• Each shard runs only its assigned subset via Cypress --spec
• Logs include total specs, assigned count, and per-shard spec list

Stability improvements

• fail-fast: false ensures all shards complete, even if one fails
• Added empty shard guard to prevent failures when shard count exceeds spec count

Artifact clarity

• Improved artifact naming for easier traceability:

  • cypress-<browser>-shard-<n>-report
  • cypress-component-report