Show HN: Checking Pope's election results with smoke test script for chimney

by vasusenon 5/8/2025, 4:13 PMwith 12 comments

This Playwright test script uses AI to test if there's smoke coming out of the Sistine Chapel chimney and whether that smoke is white. The test only passes if the smoke is white.

Currently, set to use Google Gemini Flash 2.0, but you can switch it to use other LLM providers/models by setting the environment variable in the Github actions workflow: https://github.com/donobu-inc/donobu-papal-election-tests/bl...

I've set it to run every minute during the Papal Conclave election times - https://github.com/donobu-inc/donobu-papal-election-tests/ac...

by devonbleakon 5/8/2025, 5:19 PM

Alternative version: check for dings on my phone from every news outlet sending a notification about it.

by hcazon 5/8/2025, 5:05 PM

What was your motivation to use AI for this instead of simple image analysis?

by akmarinovon 5/8/2025, 5:25 PM

Test should be passing now

by aitchnyuon 5/9/2025, 10:54 AM

Instead of AI looking at your code and browser and writing Playwright scripts, AI is directly controlling browser and asserting over tests. Do we have to wait for on-prem multimodal low latency AI for this to be viable?

And nice "smoke test" and making me curious about your product.

by alkhon 5/8/2025, 5:55 PM

How much did you end up spending on API credits for Flash 2.0?