Installation

ProtoTest targets .NET 8, 9 and 10, and every package is a stable release on NuGet: dotnet add package <id> installs it directly. The prototest template scaffolds net10.0 unless you pass --framework net8.0 or net9.0.

Quick start: the template

The quickest way in is a solution that already works: a small ASP.NET Core API and a suite for it, composed, traced and reported.

dotnet new install ProtoTest.Templates
dotnet new prototest -n Shop
cd Shop
dotnet test

The run leaves TestResults/Shop.prototrace and TestResults/Shop.html in the test project's output folder — Shop.Tests/bin/Debug/net10.0/TestResults/; the template renames them to whatever you pass to -n. Drop the trace onto trace.prototest.dev, then read Your first test to see how each part is built.

Going further: add ProtoTest to your own project

ProtoTest is a set of small packages: your test runner, ProtoTest.Core, plus one package per integration you use. Every runner and integration depends on Core, so it arrives transitively — add it directly when you want to reference the host types from your own code.

1. Core and your runner

dotnet add package ProtoTest.Core   # host, context, hooks, attributes, trace
dotnet add package ProtoTest.NUnit  # NUnit

The runner packages are ProtoTest.NUnit, ProtoTest.Xunit (xUnit v2), ProtoTest.Xunit3 (xUnit v3), ProtoTest.MSTest and ProtoTest.TUnit. Each one needs a small setup class — see Test runners.

2. Your integrations

dotnet add package ProtoTest.AspNetCore         # host an ASP.NET Core app in-process
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Rest               # HTTP/REST APIs
dotnet add package ProtoTest.GraphQL            # GraphQL APIs
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Grpc               # gRPC services
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Web.Playwright     # browser tests with Playwright
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Web.Selenium       # browser tests with Selenium
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Data               # test data and provisioning
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Sql                # a per-test database connection
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Messaging.RabbitMq # publish and await messages on RabbitMQ
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Sheets             # assert on generated spreadsheets
dotnet add package ProtoTest.OpenApi            # OpenAPI contract coverage

Infrastructure the run starts and owns comes as its own package, next to the integration it serves:

dotnet add package ProtoTest.Sql.Testcontainers                 # a database container
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Messaging.RabbitMq.Testcontainers  # a RabbitMQ container
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Sql.EntityFrameworkCore            # EF Core over the per-test connection

Two shared packages arrive transitively through the integrations above; add them directly only when you reference their types yourself:

dotnet add package ProtoTest.Json           # shape matching and JsonValue constraints
dotnet add package ProtoTest.Testcontainers # base class for run-scoped containers

3. Optional extras

dotnet add package ProtoTest.Reporting      # JSON and HTML reports
dotnet add package ProtoTest.OpenTelemetry  # export operations to OpenTelemetry

What comes along

You add	You also get
any package	ProtoTest.Core
ProtoTest.Rest, ProtoTest.GraphQL, ProtoTest.Grpc	ProtoTest.Http, ProtoTest.Json
ProtoTest.Sheets	ProtoTest.Json
ProtoTest.Web.Playwright, ProtoTest.Web.Selenium	ProtoTest.Web
ProtoTest.Messaging.RabbitMq	ProtoTest.Messaging
ProtoTest.Sql.EntityFrameworkCore	ProtoTest.Sql
ProtoTest.Sql.Testcontainers, ProtoTest.Messaging.RabbitMq.Testcontainers	ProtoTest.Testcontainers
ProtoTest.OpenApi	ProtoTest.Rest

ProtoTest.Http is the shared HTTP client and authentication layer for REST, GraphQL and gRPC. It is primarily an extension point for integration authors; application suites normally reference Rest, GraphQL or Grpc instead of adding it themselves.

Browsers for Playwright

Set InstallBrowsers and Playwright downloads the browser it needs before the first launch, so a clean machine or CI runner needs no separate step. Alternatively, set Channel = "msedge" or "chrome" to drive a browser that's already installed. See Web.

Next

Your first test walks through a complete suite, step by step.