Replay modes and Recorded Journey

ScenarioDeck separates how the saved state is reached from how network dependencies are handled.

From a State Card, the normal developer launcher chooses:

Reach state
Saved state / Recorded Journey

Browser session
Development Profile / Clean Session

Network
captured behavior replayed; unmatched requests stop

→ Reproduce

There are no separate top-level Open, Replay, and Verify wizards.

Replay / Frozen network behavior

Supported captured dependencies are served from immutable replay material. Unconfigured in-scope remote requests fail closed and appear as typed safe misses.

Frozen describes the controlled surrounding network behavior. It does not mean that a State Card is a special “Frozen card,” and it does not mean ScenarioDeck captured a database or server environment.

Local

An explicitly selected supported dependency may use an approved loopback target while the surrounding captured world remains replayed.

The overall runtime may combine replayed dependencies with one or more explicitly approved Local dependencies. Captured/source credentials are not automatically forwarded to Local. Local authentication, when needed, is configured through the approved current-code/test boundary.

Block

An explicitly selected route may be aborted deterministically when neither captured replay nor Local behavior is appropriate.

No implicit live fallback

Unsupported protocol, unmatched request, invalid target, policy mismatch, or missing evidence is reported explicitly. ScenarioDeck does not silently contact the original system or broaden the allowed origin because a reproduction failed.

Saved state

Saved state starts directly from the State Card’s selected saved checkpoint/state under the chosen browser-session and network policy.

Use it when the useful starting point can be restored without replaying the recorded setup path.

Recorded Journey

Recorded Journey advances through the bounded semantic path captured for the State Card.

A Journey may be:

Full — all supported recorded steps can run automatically;
Partial — automatic segments are separated by explicit manual barriers;
unavailable — the Card can still be useful through Saved state when compatible.

A partial Journey pauses at the manual barrier, lets the user complete the required step, and resumes later automatic steps only after explicit Resume.

ScenarioDeck resolves exact semantic targets and stops on missing, ambiguous, or drifted targets. It does not add fuzzy selector fallback, arbitrary scripts, branching suites, scheduling, generic CI behavior, or automatic unsafe retries.

Browser session is independent

Both Saved state and Recorded Journey can use the browser-session mode selected in the same launcher:

Development Profile for persistent ScenarioDeck-owned local browser state;
Clean Session for a fresh isolated browser context.

A Clean Session is not a separate top-level workflow. It is a browser-session choice for the reproduction you are about to run.

CLI and MCP

The interactive CLI can start an available Journey only after the current explicit human confirmation.

MCP can inspect Journey availability and the safe State Card/runtime context. It cannot silently bypass the human-confirmation boundary for an interactive browser Journey; a start request returns HUMAN_CONFIRMATION_REQUIRED before browser creation.