Sanity Check

ELI5 — The Vibe Check

A sanity check is you quickly checking that the most obvious, basic thing works before going deeper. Like checking if the power is plugged in before calling tech support. It's a quick gut-check, not a full test suite.

Real Talk

A sanity check is an informal, rapid test to verify that a system or component is functioning at a basic level. It's less formal than a smoke test and is often done manually. The term is also used more broadly to mean 'double-check your assumptions before proceeding.'

When You'll Hear This

"Just do a quick sanity check that the API is returning data before we debug the frontend." / "Sanity check: is the environment variable actually set?"