service-virtualization

name	service-virtualization
description	Decision framework for isolating every external dependency in a test suite: when to use in-process mocks, HTTP stubs (MSW, WireMock), record-replay, fault injection (Toxiproxy), or ephemeral real services (Testcontainers), and how to enforce that no real calls escape in CI. Use when: "mock service," "stub API," "fake service," "WireMock," "MSW," "Toxiproxy," "test isolation," "dependency management," "stub an external API in CI." Not for: consumer-driven contract verification (Pact, broker) — use contract-testing; standing up a full Docker Compose env or seed data — use test-environments; broad resilience/game-day fault campaigns — use chaos-engineering. Related: contract-testing, test-environments, api-testing, test-data-management, chaos-engineering.
license	MIT
metadata	{"author":"kindlmann","version":"2.0","category":"infrastructure"}

Mock Stripe at the SDK layer and your tests pass green while production 500s the moment Stripe changes a response field — because the stub was never tied to a contract. This skill picks the right isolation strategy per dependency (in-process mock, HTTP stub, record-replay, fault injection, or ephemeral real service), stubs at the HTTP layer so tests survive SDK upgrades, and makes the CI run fail when any real call escapes the stubs.

Quick Route

Situation	Go to
Node/browser test hitting an external HTTP API	MSW → references/msw.md
Polyglot CI, complex matching, or you need a standalone stub server	WireMock → references/wiremock.md
Dependency is a DB / cache / queue	Testcontainers → references/testcontainers.md
Testing timeouts, latency, connection resets	Toxiproxy → references/toxiproxy.md
Bootstrapping stubs from a real API, or a multi-step baseline	Record-replay → references/record-replay.md
Wiring any of these into GitHub Actions	references/ci.md
Not sure which to reach for	Decision Tree (below)

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Discovery Questions

Check .agents/qa-project-context.md first — if it exists, use it, respect existing mocking conventions, and skip anything answered there. Then:

• How many external dependencies does the system call, and which are painful in tests? Rate-limited, slow, flaky, or paid dependencies are the highest-priority virtualization candidates; list payment, email, auth, and third-party data sources.
• What testing levels need isolation? Unit tests want fast in-process mocks; integration tests want HTTP-level stubs; E2E wants real or containerized services — the level sets the strategy.
• Does the provider offer an official test mode or sandbox? Stripe test mode, Twilio test creds, etc. beat any home-grown stub for fidelity — prefer them where they exist.
• Do you have contracts with these dependencies? If yes, contract tests keep stubs in sync; see contract-testing. If no, mocking what you don't own is a known risk (Core Principle 3).
• Docker available in CI? No Docker steers you to MSW (in-process); Docker unlocks WireMock, Testcontainers, and Toxiproxy.

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Core Principles

1. Match the isolation level to the confidence you need. Unit tests can mock aggressively — they test internal logic. Integration tests should use realistic stubs or real services because they test boundaries. E2E should run the closest thing to production that is still reliable.

2. Real services beat fakes when they're fast, free, and reliable. A local PostgreSQL container gives more confidence than a fake and costs little — prefer it. Reserve fakes for dependencies that are slow, unreliable, or paid.

3. Never mock what you don't own without a contract — and prefer the provider's test mode. If you stub Stripe and Stripe changes its response shape, your tests stay green while production breaks. In order of preference: use the provider's official test mode/sandbox (Stripe test mode, Twilio test creds) → an HTTP stub validated by a contract test for drift → a bare stub only when nothing better exists. See contract-testing.

4. Stubs must fail realistically. A stub that always returns 200 never exercises error handling. Every stub needs error variants: 429 rate limits, 500s, timeouts, malformed bodies.

5. One abstraction layer between test and tool. Wrap MSW handlers, WireMock stubs, and Testcontainers setup behind a consistent interface so switching tools doesn't mean rewriting tests.

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Decision Framework

When to use each isolation strategy

Strategy	Speed	Fidelity	Complexity	Best for
In-process mock	Fastest	Lowest	Trivial	Unit tests, isolating internal modules
HTTP stub (MSW)	Fast	Medium	Low	Frontend/Node tests hitting external APIs
HTTP stub (WireMock)	Fast	Medium-High	Medium	Language-agnostic, complex matching rules
Record-replay	Fast after first run	High initially, decays	Medium	Bootstrapping stubs from real APIs quickly
Service fake	Medium	High	High	Stateful dependencies (in-memory DB, fake auth)
Ephemeral real (Testcontainers)	Slower	Highest	Medium	Databases, message queues, caches
Shared real service	Slow	Production-level	Low (to set up)	Staging validation, final pre-deploy check

Decision tree

Is the dependency internal to your codebase?
├─ Yes → In-process mock (vi.mock / jest.mock / monkeypatch)
└─ No → Is it a database, cache, or message queue?
         ├─ Yes → Testcontainers (ephemeral real instance)
         └─ No → Is it a third-party HTTP API?
                  ├─ Yes → Does the provider offer a test/sandbox mode?
                  │        ├─ Yes → Use sandbox in staging, MSW/WireMock in CI
                  │        └─ No → MSW or WireMock + contract test for drift detection
                  └─ No → Is it an internal microservice?
                           ├─ Yes → Contract test (Pact) + stub for consumer tests
                           └─ No → Evaluate case by case

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Tools

Pick MSW as the default for in-process Node/browser tests; WireMock for cross-language CI or standalone stub servers; Prism when the OpenAPI spec is the contract; Mockoon for dev-time exploratory mocking. Heavy code for each lives in references/ — pointers below.

MSW (Mock Service Worker)

MSW 2.x intercepts HTTP at the network layer (Service Worker in the browser, request interception in Node). The default for JS/TS projects. Stub at the HTTP layer (POST /v1/payment_intents), never at the SDK method — that decouples the test from the SDK version.

The strongest enforcement seam this skill offers: setupServer(...).listen({ onUnhandledRequest }). Set it to "error" in CI so any escaped real call fails the run; "warn" is fine locally while iterating.

See references/msw.md for centralized stateful handlers (payments), the Vitest setup with the CI/local onUnhandledRequest switch, per-test timeout/retry overrides, and a full stateful auth flow (create / verify / refresh / revoke via http.delete) keyed on a Bearer token.

WireMock

Language-agnostic HTTP stub server (current stable 3.13.2 — 4.0 is beta-only as of mid-2026, stay on 3.x for CI). Runs standalone or as a Docker container. Best for polyglot environments or complex matching rules.

Use priority-based mappings for error scenarios: a priority: 1 mapping that matches an opt-in header (X-Test-Scenario: rate-limit) and returns 429 shadows the default happy-path mapping only when the test asks for it. WireMock also exposes an admin API for programmatic stub creation (POST /__admin/mappings), verification (POST /__admin/requests/count), and reset (POST /__admin/mappings/reset).

See references/wiremock.md for the Docker setup, a response-templated paginated mapping, the priority error mapping JSON, and the drift-detection seam to contract-testing (replay a Pact or validate the stub against the OpenAPI spec via Prism).

Other HTTP mock servers

Tool	Strengths	When to use
Mockoon	Desktop UI + CLI; OpenAPI import; rule-based responses; lightweight	Dev-time mocking and quick CLI mocks in CI
Hoverfly	Capture-replay (record real traffic, replay deterministically); capture/simulate/modify/synthesize modes	Migrating from a real dependency to a mock — record once, replay forever
Prism	OpenAPI-driven mock server (Stoplight); validates requests + generates responses from spec	OpenAPI-first projects with a published spec
MockServer	Java-based; rich expectation matching; multi-protocol	JVM teams already on MockServer

Testcontainers

Spin up real services in Docker for integration tests — containers start before the suite and are destroyed after. Use @testcontainers/postgresql 11.x and friends. Ports are random; always read them via getMappedPort() / getConnectionUri(), never hardcode 5432/6379.

See references/testcontainers.md for parallel PostgreSQL + Redis + Elasticsearch startup with wait strategies, the Vitest globalSetup wiring (process.env.DATABASE_URL, testTimeout: 30_000), and the note on refreshing aging image tags (elasticsearch:8.12.0 is behind Elastic 9.x).

Toxiproxy (fault injection)

ghcr.io/shopify/toxiproxy:2.12.0 sits between your app and a dependency as a TCP proxy and injects latency, bandwidth limits, and connection resets. Point your app at the proxy port, not the real service. Always remove toxics in afterEach — they leak across tests otherwise.

See references/toxiproxy.md for the compose port mapping, the createProxy(name, listen, upstream) wiring (including how the compose 15432/16379 proxy ports map to the real upstream), the helpers with response.ok checks on every call, and a latency + connection-reset usage example. For broad resilience/game-day work, go to chaos-engineering instead.

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Record-Replay

Record-replay captures real API responses once and replays them deterministically — good for bootstrapping stubs and for a regression baseline of a multi-step interaction. Implement it with a record-replay library (Hoverfly, Polly.JS, or VCR-style cassettes), not a hand-rolled recorder.

It breaks on dynamic data (timestamps, UUIDs), stateful sequences, and age — recordings go stale within weeks. Always stamp a recordedAt and fail the test when a recording is older than 30 days, forcing a re-record.

See references/record-replay.md for the cassette format, the assertFresh() 30-day expiry check, and a replay harness driving a multi-step flow (create order → add items → apply coupon → checkout).

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CI Integration

MSW needs zero infrastructure — it intercepts in-process, so CI runs exactly like local; the only rule is to set onUnhandledRequest: error in CI (quoted "error" in JS) so an escaped real call hard-fails the run. WireMock and Testcontainers need Docker.

Two incompatible port models coexist and must not be mixed in one suite: the docker-compose model publishes fixed ports (a hardcoded DATABASE_URL=...localhost:5432... works), while the Testcontainers model uses random ports read via getMappedPort() and injected into process.env. Pick one per suite.

See references/ci.md for the MSW step, the docker-compose GitHub Actions job (up -d --wait --wait-timeout 120, if: always() teardown), and the tool-by-constraint table.

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Anti-Patterns

1. Mocking everything

If every dependency is mocked, your tests verify that your mocks work, not that your system works. Use real services for databases and caches (via Testcontainers); only stub external HTTP APIs.

2. Inconsistent mock behavior across tests

One test stubs Stripe as { id: "pi_123" }, another as { paymentIntentId: "pi_123" } — now you have two conflicting versions of reality. Centralize handlers and reuse one response shape across the whole suite (see the shared shape in references/msw.md).

3. Not updating stubs when the API changes

Your mapping says Stripe returns { amount: 1000 } but the real API now returns { amount: 1000, currency: "usd" }. Tests pass, production fails. Use contract tests to detect drift — see contract-testing and the drift seam in references/wiremock.md.

4. Stubbing the wrong layer

Mocking stripe.paymentIntents.create (the SDK method) couples the test to the SDK version. Stub at the HTTP layer (POST /v1/payment_intents) so the test works regardless of HTTP client or SDK version.

5. No error-scenario coverage

Stubs that always return 200 never exercise retry logic, timeout handling, rate-limit backoff, or error parsing. Every stub needs a corresponding error variant.

6. Shared, long-lived mock servers

A shared WireMock instance that multiple CI jobs hit introduces coupling and state leakage. Each test run starts its own isolated stub server.

7. Record-replay without expiration

Recordings from six months ago reflect an API that no longer exists. Stamp recordedAt and fail the test when recordings exceed 30 days, forcing a re-record (see references/record-replay.md).

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Verification

Prove no real call escaped, smallest check first:

# 1. MSW: any unhandled request must hard-fail the suite in CI
CI=1 npm run test:integration            # onUnhandledRequest:"error" → exit 0 means nothing escaped

# 2. WireMock/Testcontainers: confirm containers are reachable, then teardown leaves nothing
docker compose -f docker-compose.test.yml up -d --wait --wait-timeout 120 && echo OK
docker compose -f docker-compose.test.yml down -v

# 3. Grep CI logs for outbound calls to the real provider's host (should print nothing)
grep -iE "api\.stripe\.com|api\.twilio\.com" ci-run.log && echo "LEAK" || echo "clean"

A green run under CI=1 with onUnhandledRequest:"error" plus an empty grep for the real host is the proof that the suite ran fully virtualized.

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Done When

• A dependency isolation strategy is decided and documented for each external dependency (which get MSW/WireMock stubs, which use Testcontainers, which use the provider's sandbox mode).
• Stubs cover all critical external dependencies with at least one error path each (4xx/5xx, timeout, or rate limit).
• Stubs and mapping files are versioned alongside test code in the same repository.
• The suite runs green in CI with onUnhandledRequest: "error" (or the WireMock equivalent), and a grep of CI logs for the real provider host returns nothing.
• Any record-replay baseline carries a recordedAt stamp and a 30-day expiry check that fails the test when stale.

Reference Files (in references/)

• msw.md — centralized stateful handlers, Vitest setup with the CI/local onUnhandledRequest switch, per-test timeout/retry overrides, and the full create/verify/refresh/revoke auth flow.
• wiremock.md — Docker setup, response-templated and paginated mappings, the priority-based error mapping, the admin API, and the contract-drift seam (Pact/Prism).
• testcontainers.md — parallel PostgreSQL/Redis/Elasticsearch startup, globalSetup wiring, and the image-tag refresh note.
• toxiproxy.md — compose ports, createProxy upstream wiring, helpers with response.ok checks, and a latency + reset usage example.
• record-replay.md — tooling choices, the cassette format, the 30-day assertFresh check, and a multi-step replay harness.
• ci.md — MSW (zero-infra), the docker-compose GitHub Actions job, the two port models, and the tool-by-constraint table.

Related Skills

• contract-testing — Consumer-driven contract verification with Pact/broker; go there to prove a stub matches a real provider, not just to detect drift against a shared schema.
• test-environments — Full Docker Compose env strategy, preview environments, and seed data; go there for standing up the environment, not for isolating a single dependency.
• chaos-engineering — Broad fault-injection campaigns, game days, and blast-radius limits; go there when resilience itself is the goal rather than making one dependency misbehave in a test.
• api-testing — REST/GraphQL testing patterns, schema validation, and auth flow testing.
• test-data-management — Factory patterns and data seeding for stub state setup.