What’s the smallest restore test that proves a self-hosted service is actually recoverable?

A successful backup job seems like a different milestone from a usable restore. I’m interested in a small, repeatable check for self-hosted apps that doesn’t turn into a whole weekend project. My proposed minimum would be: restore into an isolated instance, restore the necessary configuration and secrets, sign in, open a known record and attachment, and check that user permissions still behave correctly. I would also keep outgoing email and webhooks disabled during the test so the restored instance doesn’t contact real users. What would you add or remove from that checklist? Which dependency is easiest to overlook: app version, database version, secrets, external authentication, or something else? And how do you keep restore testing manageable when you run several services? I’d especially like examples of a lightweight test that caught a problem a green backup status missed.