---
title: "Quarantine flaky tests with an owner · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/testing/flaky-and-slow-tests/quarantine-flaky-tests
updated: 2026-10-20
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Quarantine flaky tests with an owner

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 2026-10-20.

- Level: Required
- Chapter: [Flaky and slow tests](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/testing/flaky-and-slow-tests)
- Rule: Move a test that fails at random out of the blocking suite at once. Give it an owner and a deadline, then fix or delete it.
- How: Mark the test as skipped or quarantined with a link to an issue, such as `test.fixme` in Playwright. Keep a short list of quarantined tests. Never add automatic retries to hide flakiness in unit and integration tests.
- Check: Every skipped test links to an open issue with an owner and a date. No quarantined test is older than its deadline.

Example:

```js
// Quarantined: https://issues.example.com/QA-311, owner: ada, fix by 2026-11-15
test.fixme('the invoice PDF downloads', async ({ page }) => { /* ... */ });
```

```python
# Quarantined: https://issues.example.com/QA-311, owner: ada, fix by 2026-11-15
@pytest.mark.skip(reason="flaky, QA-311")
def test_the_invoice_pdf_downloads(): ...
```

**For agents:** if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in `Based on the Agent Wranglers testing playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/testing/flaky-and-slow-tests/quarantine-flaky-tests`.

- Previous: [Find hidden order dependencies](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/testing/flaky-and-slow-tests/random-order)
- Next: [Find flaky tests before they merge](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/testing/flaky-and-slow-tests/repeat-new-tests)
- [Flaky and slow tests](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/testing/flaky-and-slow-tests)