Contributing

Thanks for taking a look! This is primarily a portfolio project, but the guidelines below keep it tidy and make contributions easy to review.

Getting set up

Install JDK 21+ and Maven 3.9+ (Chrome is resolved automatically by WebDriverManager).
Clone the repo and run the smoke suite to confirm your setup:
```
mvn clean test -Dsuite=smoke.xml
```

Branch off main using a descriptive name, e.g. feat/checkout-coupons or fix/cart-badge-wait.
Keep commits focused and write imperative, descriptive messages (e.g. "Add wait for cart badge to settle").
Open a pull request into main; CI must be green before merge.

Page Objects live in src/main/java/.../pages and expose intent-revealing methods (addProductToCart), never raw locators, to callers.
No Thread.sleep. Synchronise with the helpers in BasePage (explicit waits only).
Keep locators in one place per page as private static final By fields; prefer SauceDemo's data-test attributes where available.
Add an @Step annotation to user-facing page actions so they appear in Allure.
Match the existing formatting (see .editorconfig). Run mvn -q test-compile before pushing.

Put TestNG tests under src/test/java/.../tests and register new classes in testng.xml.
Annotate tests with @Epic / @Feature / @Story / @Severity and a clear description so the Allure report stays readable.
For BDD, add scenarios under src/test/resources/features and step definitions under src/test/java/.../bdd.

mvn clean test          # full regression suite

All tests should pass and the build should be clean.