01
Test deeply.
Quality starts long before the first assertion. It starts with sharper questions, the edge cases nobody thought of, and a feel for exactly where software breaks.
Quality leader · Product builder · Sharing the How
Building software
worth trusting.
I'm Julia Pottinger. I've spent over a decade in QA, testing real products, finding the gaps teams miss, and turning messy releases into something safer to ship. Now I build my own products too, including AI tools, mobile apps, and games, and I share the practical lessons as I go.
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50k+
Engineers reached
70+
Articles, talks & videos
2015
In QA since
Quality, by design
Engineer · builder · educator
How I think about quality
The beliefs behind my work.
02
Automate what matters.
Not everything deserves a script. The craft is choosing the high-value paths and building a suite your whole team actually trusts and maintains.
03
Ship with confidence.
When testing and automation pull in the same direction, release night stops being scary. That calm is the entire point, and you can learn it.
04
Drive the tools, keep the standard.
The tools got faster, and they will write the test, run the suite, and open the pull request. They cannot decide what is worth trusting. I drive them and keep the standard, because speed without judgment is just faster guessing.
05
Share the how.
Knowing something is only half of it. Showing another person how to do it, in plain steps they can follow, is the part that lasts.
06
Stay curious.
The best testers keep asking what if. Tools and frameworks change every year, but the habit of poking at the edges is what carries across all of them.
Meet Julia
A builder, educator, and endlessly curious human.
I test. I build. I teach. Over a decade in software quality led me here, and now I create my own products too, from AI tools to mobile apps and games.
I love sharing what I learn through articles, courses, talks and YouTube. The goal is simple: make testing, automation and building products feel clearer for the next person doing the work.
Beyond the blog
Things I build.
I don't just write about shipping quality software. I design, build, and ship my own, under my studio.
Start with the problem
Tools and guides for testing what matters before you ship.
Pick the thing your team is wrestling with right now: a test strategy, a stronger API safety net, or a better way to use AI without lowering the bar.
API testingCheck the layers users never see.Walk through request inputs, auth, contracts, errors, data quality, and observability.Use the checklistAI-assisted QAGive AI the context it needs.Use stronger prompts, real app access, and review habits that make generated tests easier to trust.Get the guideLocatorsWrite selectors that survive a redesign.Grab the right CSS, XPath or WebdriverIO selector, with a priority order that keeps tests from flaking.Open the cheat sheet
Field Notes
Build better products
by testing what matters.
Get practical notes on testing, automation, AI, mobile apps, and release decisions. I share the workflows, lessons, tools, and mistakes from real product work so you can ship with more confidence and fewer last-minute surprises.
Real project notes
What I am learning from building, testing, and shipping real products.
Practical QA guidance
Testing strategy, automation, release risk, AI workflows, and better product decisions.
Useful, not noisy
No spam. No generic quality takes. Just notes worth opening.
Fresh from the articles
Latest articles
Practical, field-tested writing on the things that make software dependable.
AI
The Visual Bugs AI Missed in My Game (and How I Caught Them)
AI agents can inspect screenshots, but they still miss visual problems in a real game. The pixel, touch, and trust bugs I caught, plus the human pass that found them.
AI
AI Visual Testing: What It Can Check and Where Humans Decide
AI can inspect screenshots, compare pixels, and verify structure. See what each visual testing method proves, misses, and still leaves for human QA.
AI
Match-3 Game Mechanics With AI: Powers, Combos, Balance, and Feel
How I designed and implemented Tropic Tumble's match-3 powers, combos, difficulty, and game feel with AI, including real Godot rules and contract tests.
Godot
Godot for a Mobile Game in 2026: What I Wish I Had Known
I built Tropic Tumble in Godot and shipped it on Android and iOS. Why I would choose Godot again, and what mattered: renderer, screens, exports, store gates.
AI
Designing a Mobile Game With AI: Screens, Art, and Music
How I designed Tropic Tumble's mobile screens, art families, and island music with AI, then turned generated candidates into production assets.
AI
How I Run Three AI Coding Agents Like a One-Person Studio
Building a mobile game solo, I did not pick one AI tool. ChatGPT designed, Cursor and Codex built, Claude reviewed, and I stayed the gate. Here is the system.
Browse by topic
What would you like to learn?
Watch & learn
Prefer video? I teach on YouTube too.
Plus my free WebdriverIO course on Test Automation University.
Why read here
Made for people who
learn by doing.
01
Practical first
Every article comes from real projects: code you can run, checklists you can use, mistakes you can skip.
02
Clear & calm
Strong hierarchy, elegant code blocks, and zero clutter. Long-form that respects your attention.
03
Interactive
Tools that respond as you work: a career roadmap and an API checklist that save your progress as you go.