TestGuild Automation Podcast Locust Performance Testing with AI and Observability with Lars Holmberg
Jan 13, 2026
Lars Holmberg, Founder and CTO of Locust, shares his expertise in performance testing and observability. He explains why Python is the preferred choice for AI-assisted load testing, highlighting Locust's flexibility and massive concurrency capabilities. They delve into the importance of observability for identifying performance bottlenecks and outline common mistakes teams make. Lars also discusses how integrating Locust with CI/CD and GitHub Actions streamlines the testing process, while offering insights into the future of testing with AsyncIO and GIL improvements.
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Episode notes
Run Locust In CI Pipelines
- Integrate Locust into CI/CD by installing it in your pipeline and running command-line scenarios.
- Lars points to GitHub Actions examples for straightforward automation.
Test Your Application, Not Third-Party CDNs
- Focus load tests on application-specific flows and avoid testing outsourced infrastructure like CDNs.
- Lars advises testing what your application owns to get actionable results and skip external services.
Prioritize Common User Flows
- Choose test coverage for flows that represent 95% of users rather than rare functional edge cases.
- Lars recommends performance test focus on common behavior and selectively performance-test rare but important cases.