CircleCI: Split workflows for unit and story tests

[ndelangen]

Related: #27018

What I did

This pull request updates the CircleCI configuration to improve test organization and reporting. The main changes introduce a dedicated job for running Storybook stories tests separately from unit tests, enhance test result reporting, and ensure both types of tests are executed in the CI workflows.

CircleCI configuration improvements:

• Added a new stories-tests job to run tests for files matching the *.stories.* pattern, separating them from standard unit tests for better clarity and parallelization.
• Updated the unit test job to exclude story files and improved test result reporting by storing test results and adding workflow failure handlers.

Workflow enhancements:

• Integrated the new stories-tests job into all relevant workflows, ensuring it runs after the build step alongside unit tests. [1] [2] [3]

Checklist for Contributors

Testing

The changes in this PR are covered in the following automated tests:

• stories
• unit tests
• integration tests
• end-to-end tests

Manual testing

This section is mandatory for all contributions. If you believe no manual test is necessary, please state so explicitly. Thanks!

Documentation

• Add or update documentation reflecting your changes
• If you are deprecating/removing a feature, make sure to update
  MIGRATION.MD

Checklist for Maintainers

• When this PR is ready for testing, make sure to add ci:normal, ci:merged or ci:daily GH label to it to run a specific set of sandboxes. The particular set of sandboxes can be found in code/lib/cli-storybook/src/sandbox-templates.ts

• Make sure this PR contains one of the labels below:

  Available labels

  • bug: Internal changes that fixes incorrect behavior.
  • maintenance: User-facing maintenance tasks.
  • dependencies: Upgrading (sometimes downgrading) dependencies.
  • build: Internal-facing build tooling & test updates. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • cleanup: Minor cleanup style change. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • documentation: Documentation only changes. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • feature request: Introducing a new feature.
  • BREAKING CHANGE: Changes that break compatibility in some way with current major version.
  • other: Changes that don't fit in the above categories.

🦋 Canary release

This PR does not have a canary release associated. You can request a canary release of this pull request by mentioning the @storybookjs/core team here.

core team members can create a canary release here or locally with gh workflow run --repo storybookjs/storybook canary-release-pr.yml --field pr=<PR_NUMBER>

Greptile Summary

Updated On: 2025-09-12 09:57:07 UTC

This PR refactors the CircleCI configuration to separate story tests from unit tests into distinct jobs. The changes modify the existing unit-tests job to exclude story files by changing the test glob pattern from **/*.{test,spec,stories}.{ts,tsx,js,jsx,cjs} to **/*.{test,spec}.{ts,tsx,js,jsx,cjs}, removing the "stories" pattern. A new stories-tests job is introduced that specifically targets story files with the pattern **/*.{stories}.{ts,tsx,js,jsx,cjs} and runs with parallelism set to 2 for better performance.

The new stories-tests job uses the sb_playwright executor with xlarge resource class and includes the same infrastructure as unit tests: test result storage, workflow failure reporting, and cancellation on failure. This job is integrated into all three CircleCI workflows (normal, merged, and daily), positioned to run after the build step alongside the existing unit tests.

This architectural change aligns with the broader CI/CD strategy of the Storybook project, which already employs job separation for different test types (e2e-dev, e2e-production, e2e-ui). The separation enables better parallelization, clearer test result categorization, and more targeted debugging when specific test types fail. The change maintains the same test coverage while providing improved organization and potentially more reliable CI runs.

Confidence score: 4/5

• This PR is safe to merge with low risk as it maintains existing test coverage while improving CI organization
• Score reflects well-structured changes that follow existing patterns in the codebase and address a documented issue
• Pay attention to the CircleCI configuration file to ensure the glob patterns correctly capture intended test files

[nx-cloud]

View your CI Pipeline Execution ↗ for commit 5d08ff2

Command	Status	Duration	Result
nx run-many -t build --parallel=3	✅ Succeeded	43s	View ↗

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☁️ Nx Cloud last updated this comment at 2025-09-12 09:45:18 UTC

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