What is a smoke test?

Smoke test is a basic, superficial testing of a software product, conducted after assembly or deployment to verify that the main functions work and the system does not 'crash' immediately.

The goal of a smoke test is to quickly identify critical errors that make further testing pointless. If the smoke test fails, the product is sent back for revision.

Example: after assembling a mobile application, a smoke test is run to ensure that the application launches, the main screens open, and there are no critical failures.

Smoke test is often called a 'health check' or 'sanity check'.