Our product has come a long way. At the start of 2025, the way you interacted with Antithesis was by getting test results in your email, and opening a static page with report details.

Fast forward to the start of 2026 and we have a SaaS experience where you log in, kick off test runs, view test run results, and kick off debugging sessions.

If you squint, much of the UI we have looks like every other SaaS. We have a left sidebar with menu items, a table displaying test run results, and a history tree to visualize all the simulations of your system and key events that occurred.

A what?!

I suppose there are a few unique things about our SaaS experience. But rather than being born out of marketing strategy, our uniqueness is born out of necessity.

In the introduction to Alan Cooper’s “About Face,” he uses the example of an oven designed before and after the digital age to explain how interaction design is a discipline that was born out of complexity introduced by new technologies. With the introduction of microprocessors, LCD screens, and embedded operating systems, most new ovens no longer have just one knob. In the same way, when we introduced deterministic simulation testing, our oven needed a few new buttons.

The way we test software is different from any other product in the world. This is elite. This also means that we will run into some novel interface design challenges.

In 2025, we focused on a few hard challenges, but mostly easy ones that provided quick value:

1. Provide quick access to key features
2. Help people access runs they kicked off
3. Show customers a pulse of their Antithesis usage

Using a UI to serve these needs helped us provide some kind of answer to these questions fast (but sometimes the best interface is no interface. We plan to have some version of an API out soon).

Our focus for 2026 is on some harder design challenges. How do we help engineers:

1. Set up their system in our one-of-a-kind environment
2. Iterate on their one-of-a-kind setup
3. Make sense of the results from a test run they kicked off
4. Know which bugs matter most

And, how do we show managers that we:

1. Are not wasting engineer’s time on low-priority bugs
2. Will help them ship features faster.
3. Will make their on-call flow easier.

Some of these problems can be solved through marketing content and thoughtful onboarding tutorials. They don't all require a fancy UI.