Kerno

Kerno's agent calls the customer's running endpoints, triggers background tasks through the customer's own message broker, introspects MCP servers and runs against real dependencies such as databases and caches, and integrates with coding agents over MCP, GitHub and CI. These actions reach the customer's own app under test. No connector, OAuth-authorized action or custom tool that lets an agent act on other business systems is described.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs security testing, environment setup and integrations, and kerno.io/llms.txtread 2026-09-21

A fixed pipeline drives Kerno's agent, mixing deterministic steps with the agent's own planning: it indexes code, builds a Docker Compose environment, plans and writes scenarios, runs each one repeatedly with critique and repair until it passes, and updates the suite, as async jobs that can be polled or canceled. Customers do not define or reuse their own workflows.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs how Kerno works, testing modes and Kerno MCPread 2026-09-21

Underneath the agent sits a deterministic index of the customer's codebase that resolves every function, class, model, endpoint, import and reference to a precise location. Kerno keeps it up to date as the code changes by re-deriving only what a change affects, and queries it to find each change's blast radius and the endpoints to test; custom rules add the team's own testing guidance. New code enters the index without retraining, and the agent reads it to decide what to test and to show which code a change touches.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs codebase indexing, how Kerno works and custom rulesread 2026-09-21

Before Kerno's agent acts, it pauses for approval: it shows the full environment build plan and cannot start the environment until the plan is explicitly approved, it shows the scenario plan before writing any test and lets the person approve it, reject individual scenarios or give feedback, and it opens feedback requests for plan approvals, planner questions or missing credentials that are answered with an approval or a rejection with a reason. Generate runs always pause for approval, update runs pause only in interactive mode, and a plan-approval setting chooses between gated and automatic runs.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs testing modes, Kerno MCP feedback gate and changelogread 2026-09-21

On the Enterprise plan, Kerno offers SSO and SAML, audit logs and data controls and a custom data processing agreement, its portal gives organizations owner, admin and member roles, and API keys can be revoked or expire; the homepage states a SOC 2 Type 2 audit is in progress.

SourceKerno, kerno.io pricing and homepage, and kerno.gitbook.io/docs organizations and teamsread 2026-09-21

An IDE extension shows what Kerno's agent is doing, run reports are uploaded to a portal that rolls up coverage, issues and runs across repositories, and job status and results are readable over MCP and HTTP. A step-by-step record of the agent's own prompts, tool calls and reasoning is not described.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs portal overview, reports and dashboards, IDE extension and Kerno MCPread 2026-09-21

What Kerno's agent learns from the code, from running tests and from the team's feedback, such as how an endpoint authenticates or what must be seeded before a request succeeds, goes into long-term memory, and the agent reuses those lessons when planning later tests. People can review each lesson and agree, amend its wording or disagree so Kerno stops using it, unchecked lessons are labeled as such, and each entry is stored as a git commit stamped with the code revision it was learned at so stale analysis is re-derived when code changes.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs memory and learningread 2026-09-21

The Kerno agent runs on the customer's machine, with the repository, code index, test environment, scenarios and baselines kept on the local filesystem and in local Docker containers and no code stored on Kerno's servers, and the Enterprise plan adds self-hosting in the customer's own infrastructure.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs security and privacy, and kerno.io/pricingread 2026-09-21

The offering is a single testing agent with built-in validation categories. No catalog of ready-made agents, templates or packaged workflows a buyer adopts for its own work is offered.

SourceKerno, kerno.io homepage and kerno.io/llms.txtread 2026-09-21

A customer's coding agent starts Kerno's agent by calling it over MCP inside a coding session, and a GitHub Action replays the committed tests on every pull request without an account or agent. No event or schedule that starts the agent on its own, without someone's session asking for it, is documented.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs Kerno MCP and running tests in CIread 2026-09-21

To plan and reason about tests, Kerno sends code excerpts to Anthropic and OpenAI through its own proxy. No customer choice of model or provider, bring-your-own keys, routing policy or fallback is documented.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs security and privacyread 2026-09-21

Kerno is driven through an MCP server with an enumerated set of tools for workspaces, environments, endpoint tests, jobs and feedback, a documented CLI installed from npm, an HTTP jobs endpoint and an API key for non-interactive sign-in in CI. The local agent also serves a REST API on localhost for the IDE extension and CLI, but no reference for it and no SDK is published.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs Kerno MCP, Kerno CLI and integrations and API keysread 2026-09-21

Kerno generates functional, edge-case and security tests for each endpoint, runs them against the customer's running app to capture a baseline, re-runs the affected tests whenever the customer's coding agent changes code and reports each difference from the baseline, updates the suite when a change is intended, tests MCP servers' tools against the running server, and replays the committed tests on every pull request as a CI check.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs how Kerno works, change validation and running tests in CI, and kerno.io/llms.txtread 2026-09-21

Kerno tests backends, APIs, MCP servers and background workers over HTTP and message brokers, and no browser, desktop or computer control by an agent is documented.

SourceKerno, kerno.gitbook.io/docs overview and kerno.io/llms.txtread 2026-09-21