Authoring Scenarios

Creating a scenario is a declarative exercise:

1. Shape the topology: decide how many validators and executors to run, and what high-level network and data-availability characteristics matter for the test.
2. Attach workloads: pick traffic generators that align with your goals (transactions, data-availability blobs, or chaos for resilience probes).
3. Define expectations: specify the health signals that must hold when the run finishes (e.g., consensus liveness, inclusion of submitted activity; see Core Content: Workloads & Expectations).
4. Set duration: choose a run window long enough to observe meaningful block progression and the effects of your workloads.
5. Choose a runner: target local processes for fast iteration, Docker Compose for reproducible multi-node stacks, or Kubernetes for cluster-grade validation. For environment considerations, see Operations.

Keep scenarios small and explicit: make the intended behavior and the success criteria clear so failures are easy to interpret and act upon.