Steply is a CLI tool to validate APIs, databases, Kafka messages, and more.

✨ Define the outcome, and Steply generates and executes the test automatically!

• Automate BDD-style tests or run manual validations using simple JSON or YAML — no coding required.
• Store tests in Git and easily manage manual tests, regression suites, and integration tests.

See examples.

AI Prompt (example)

Auto Generate Scenarios by Claude Code or CoPilot or Others:

Write a Zerocode scenario that conforms to schema/zerocode-scenario-schema.json for <your API testing idea>. Use the assertions block (not verify) and include retry of 3 attempts with 500ms delay.

Quick Start

Laptop or PC:

• Step-1: Install Steply (In your laptop or PC) from "Install" section below.
• Step-2: Clone the examples repo and then do cd steply-examples.
• Step-3: Run a test or test suite using the run command and verify the PASS/FAIL result at the concole.
  • Also see /target for reports & logs.

CI CD:

• Step-1: Push your test scenarios and envs to your Git repo. Ignore the /target (results) folder in .gitignore.
• Step-2: Configure the CI workflow (see the Install section below).
• Step-3: Trigger the workflow and check the Job console for PASS/FAIL status at the console.
  • Also see /target for reports & logs(or look for Artifacts after CI job completes).

Install

Mac Arm / Mac Intel / Linux / Ubuntu / VPS / CI CD Workflow

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/QABEES/steply/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

- name: Set up Java 17
  uses: actions/setup-java@v4
  with:
    distribution: temurin
    java-version: '17'

- name: Install Steply
  run: |
    curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/QABEES/steply/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
    echo "$HOME/.local/bin" >> $GITHUB_PATH

Windows OS

Follow the Manual Install (Windows OS) steps below.

Manual Install (Windows OS)

Step 1 — Download the zip Go to the Steply Releases page and download the no-jre zip for your target release, e.g.:

steply-20260425.01-no-jre.zip

Step 2 — Unzip Open PowerShell and run:

Expand-Archive -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\steply-20260425.01-no-jre.zip" -DestinationPath "$env:USERPROFILE\steply"

Step 3 — Ensure Java 17+ is available Check your Java version in PowerShell:

java -version

Must be 17 or higher. If not installed, download from adoptium.net and install.

Then set JAVA_HOME permanently (run once in PowerShell as Administrator):

[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("JAVA_HOME", "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-17", "Machine")

Step 4 — Add Steply to PATH Set PATH permanently (run once in PowerShell as Administrator):

$current = [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", "Machine")
[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", "$env:USERPROFILE\steply\bin;$current", "Machine")

Close and reopen PowerShell for the changes to take effect.

Step 5 — Verify

steply --version

Manual Install (Mac / Linux / Unix)

Step 1 — Download the zip Go to the Steply Releases page and download the no-jre zip for your target release, e.g.:

steply-20260425.01-no-jre.zip

Step 2 — Unzip

unzip steply-20260425.01-no-jre.zip -d ~/steply

Step 3 — Ensure Java 17+ is available Check that JAVA_HOME points to a Java 17+ installation:

java -version          # must be 17 or higher
echo $JAVA_HOME        # should not be empty

If JAVA_HOME is not set, set it in your shell profile (e.g. ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc):

export JAVA_HOME=/path/to/your/java17

Step 4 — Add Steply to PATH

export PATH="$HOME/steply/bin:$PATH"

Add the same line to your shell profile so it persists across sessions, then reload:

source ~/.zshrc   # or source ~/.bashrc

Step 5 — Verify

steply --version

Run a test

steply --scenario tests/get_user_api.json --target-env env/sit1.properties

Run a full test suite

steply --suite tests --target-env env/sit.properties

Project Folder Structure:

my-integration-testing-project/
├── env
│   ├── sit.properties
│   ├── uat.properties
│   ├── pre_prod.properties
│   └── github_host.properties
└── tests
   ├── validate_github_user_api.json
   ├── validate_create_user_api.json
   └── validate_update_emplyee_api.json

TEST RESULTS:

├── target/
│   ├── logs
│   │   └── executions.log
│   ├── test-report.csv
│   ├── test-interactive-report.html

Testcase Example:

JSON

  {
    "name": "call_pcdp_api",
    "url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat",
    "method": "GET",
    "request": {
      "headers": {
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
      }
    },
    "verify": {
      "status": 200
    }
  }

or

YAML

- name: call_pcdp_api
  url: https://api.github.com/users/octocat
  method: GET
  request:
    headers:
      Content-Type: application/json
  verify:
    status: 200

Exit Codes (for CI Workflow)

Steply returns(for the example above):

• 0 → HTTP 200 OK
• Non-zero → Any other response

This makes it easy to use in CI pipelines to determine build status.

Authentication

The Authorization header can be automatically populated using a token from an authentication server.

CLI Help

➜  steply -h

or

➜  steply --help

Reports & Logs

After execution, reports are generated in the "target/" folder:

• HTML interactive report
• CSV report
• Execution logs (see "target/logs/" folder)

Notes

• --folder and --suite work the same way.
• --target and --target-env work the same way.
• Short forms like --targ are also accepted.

Alternative to

• Postman
• Insomnia
• Karate
• PyRestTest
• Cucumber

but with modern, opensource, lightweight, secure and CLI appraoch, providing easily pluggable cloud integrations.

While the above tools are powerful, they are often heavy, proprietary, or tightly coupled to specific language ecosystems(such as Java, Groovy, Python etc).

This project :

• focuses on providing a open-source and collaborative developer/SDET experience
• provides easy/pluggable integrations (Kafka, S3, Postgres, and more)

JSON Schema for Test Scenario

A JSON Schema (Draft-07) for scenario files is published at schema/zerocode-scenario-schema.json and pointed to from robots.txt at the project root. Use it to:

• Validate scenarios from the CLI, e.g. with ajv-cli:

  # Note: This is optional step, only do this if you have npx and ajv-cli already installed
  # npx: Runs npm package without global install
  npx ajv-cli validate -s schema/zerocode-scenario-schema.json -d core/src/test/resources/templates/example_scenario_1.json
  

Credits

Special thanks to all the authors and contributors of the zerocode-tdd JSON/YAML testing framework.

Uninstall

macOS / Linux:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/QABEES/steply/main/scripts/uninstall.sh | bash

This removes the steply launcher, all installed files, and the PATH entry from your shell profile.

Documentation

For detailed documentation and examples, visit here

As you are using the Steply CLI, you can ignore the Maven/Java sections in the documentation.