batmat, they're definitely related. While the runATH step I expect will be run on plugins/core before pull requests are merged (ideally), this is about running some ATH smoke tests on a new version of Jenkins Essentials.
Consider a pull request to upgrade essentials.yaml, when this happens, we should be running some ATH smoke tests to make sure the code we're delivering the Essentials users is not functionally broken.
rtyler how does this articulate with INFRA-1489 in your mind?