Shift-Left practice moves integration activities earlier in the development cycle, aiding in bug detection and prevention before production.Incorporating local and integration tests early accelerates development, improves quality, and avoids costly late-stage defects.The article discusses catching defects early with Testcontainers for local integration testing.Detecting bugs early can prevent authentication issues, security vulnerabilities, and data inconsistencies.Unit tests and end-to-end tests may not catch issues like case sensitivity, highlighting the importance of proper validation.Using mocks for database interactions in unit tests can be effective but requires maintenance.Shifting to local integration tests with Testcontainers offers time savings, realistic testing, and confidence in production readiness.Testcontainers provide preconfigured implementations for testing various technologies, helping streamline the testing workflow.Local testing with Testcontainers eliminates the need for shared integration environments, saving costs and time.Shift-left testing with Testcontainers improves defect detection rates, reduces lead time for changes, and enhances developer productivity.