// the find
typicode/xv
🙅♀️ ✌️ fastest test runner
xv is an ~80-line test runner that treats exported functions as tests and uses Node's built-in assert. No API to learn, no config, just export a function named testX and run xv against your src directory. It's for people who want to write tests without the Jest/Vitest ceremony.
Zero dependencies and tiny install footprint — packagephobia shows it at under 10kB. Using native assert means your tests are portable and you already know the API. ESM-first by default, which is the right call for new Node projects. The whole tool fits in one file, so if something breaks you can actually read the source.
No watch mode is a real daily-use friction point — punting to watchexec is fine in principle but most devs won't bother. No test filtering, no focusing a single test within a file, no .skip/.only equivalent — if one test in a file is slow or broken you run all of them or none. TypeScript support requires either a compile step or ts-node, both of which add friction that undercuts the simplicity pitch. Last commit was October 2023 and the issue tracker has unaddressed PRs, so this looks effectively unmaintained.