The “kitchen test” command is used to fully test the cookbooks in a CI/CD pipeline and is an elaborate process consisting of CREATING a new instance, converging it, verifying and then DESTROYING the instance. Since this is an elaborate process it is not suited to be used in the development phase of a cookbook. "kitchen converge" and "kitchen verify" commands are more useful for the cookbook development phase.

“Kitchen converge” applies the cookbook to the existing sandbox environment. It will install the chef-client, load the cookbooks and other necessary files and GOES AHEAD with the first Chef client run using kitchen.yml attributes. “Kitchen converge” has two types of return codes. A zero denotes success and a non zero value denotes failure at any step. If “kitchen converge” fails, try to delete the kitchen instance with “kitchen destroy” command and then run “kitchen converge” once again.

“Kitchen verify” helps in validating the state of the kitchen instance against test suites specified in .kitchen.yml file. Often "kitchen converge" and "kitchen verify" are FREQUENTLY used to develop infrastructure code using Test Driven Development.