Codility proctoring: what it detects, from typing patterns to the desktop app

Codility can record considerably more than the code you submit, but almost none of it is automatic. Proctoring, typing-pattern analysis, a device check and plagiarism comparison are separate features that the hiring company switches on per assessment, and the combination you face is fixed before you open the link; Codility's documentation says proctoring must be enabled before the first candidate invite. When webcam or recording is on, you are asked to consent before the test starts.

Behavioural proctoring produces a small set of events on the candidate report's timeline: paste events, tab switches, task-description copies, unusually fast completion and similar. Codility is explicit that these are not verdicts; its documentation states that not all behavioural signals are, on their own, indicative of cheating, and the decision is pushed to a human every time.

The most important change since 2025 is Typing Pattern Detection. Codility describes it as a passive signal designed to identify candidates who may be retyping a solution from another source. Organic coding leaves a messy trace: false starts, edits above lines already written, a variable renamed halfway through. Transcription is linear and clean, and that difference is what the model looks for. Retyping an answer from a second screen is no longer a gap in the system; it is the signal the system was built to catch.

The newest layer moves the assessment out of the browser. Device Integrity requires installing the Codility App, which reports whether it was used at all and whether any external tools were detected during the session. Codility says the app does not record the screen, monitor keystrokes or collect personal data, and it does not publish the detection list or a false-negative rate; treat "detects known cheating tools" as a vendor claim about a preview feature. Underneath all of this sit the older Similarity Check and IP Check, neither of which targets AI use.

Nothing on this list auto-rejects you. What a flag actually triggers is a follow-up: Codility can generate three AI Follow-Up Questions from your submitted code, each time-boxed to two minutes with copy-paste prevention, so a flag converts a written test into a verbal defence of your own work.

The posts below answer the specific questions: whether a given Codility test is proctored and how the intro page shows it, whether it records your screen, how it uses the camera (snapshots, video, photo ID), whether it detects tab switching and copy-paste, whether it can detect ChatGPT through typing patterns and AI matches, and what to expect from invitation to report. Facts are current as of September 2026.