how Leaping AI ships faster with reliable e2e tests - without hiring a QA

Tl;dr

• The Constraint: A tiny team (2 founders, 2 engineers) with no budget for a dedicated QA hire.
• The Pain: Manual testing bottlenecked releases, and critical bugs slipped into production under high load.
• The Solution: Octomind acts as a "Shadow QA worker," automatically generating and running 50–100+ tests on every PR.
• The Outcome: Engineering velocity matches that of a large organization without the headcount.

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The Challenge: High stakes, zero QA, and "mental toll"

Leaping AI’s engineering team is deliberately lean. With just two founders and two engineers, they didn't have the resources for a dedicated Quality Assurance role.

“We don’t have a separate QA person. Every time we do a release, we manually test everything. I personally do the QA. It’s been quite painful.”
Arkadiy Telegin, co-founder & CTO, Leaping AI

The manual approach wasn't just slow; it was leaky. Serious bugs occasionally reached production. Arkadiy recalls a particularly stressful incident:

“We would wake up and see that a lot of calls were marked as failed, but they weren’t actually failed. It only happened under high load on specific replicas. It took its mental toll to figure it out.”

They hit a wall. Writing and maintaining their own E2E test suite was:

1. Too time-consuming for a team focused on shipping features.
2. Too unstable given their fast-changing codebase.
3. Too expensive to solve by hiring dedicated staff.

They needed a way to automate quality without slowing down development.

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The Solution: A "Shadow QA" that maintains itself

Integrating Octomind changed their workflow immediately. Instead of engineers pausing to write tests, Octomind’s AI took over.

“It’s like having a shadow QA worker that creates tests on all the code you write. Tests were always an afterthought before, and now it’s okay if they are - because Octomind handles that for you.”
Arkadiy Telegin, co-founder & CTO, Leaping AI

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Why it clicked:

• Automatic Generation: PRs now trigger the creation of 50–100+ fresh tests tailored to the new features.
• Zero Maintenance Burden: Octomind auto-updates tests as the product evolves, solving the "brittle test" problem that plagues most startups.
• Peace of Mind: Seeing hundreds of green checks on a PR gives the team the confidence to merge and deploy instantly.

“It gives you peace of mind when you see all these tests have passed. It makes me much more confident to push new things for a release.”

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Results

Leaping AI now achieves the testing reliability of a large enterprise while staying lean.

1. Zero Headcount Added: They ship production-grade software without the overhead of a QA salary.
2. Faster Iteration Cycles: Developers focus on building, not fixing broken tests.
3. 50-100+ Tests Per PR: Deep regression testing happens automatically on every push.
4. Reduced Mental Load: No more waking up to "false failures" or production fire

Leaping AI’s product is autonomous - continuously improving through real-world feedback. Now, thanks to Octomind, their testing workflow is too.

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