Is there a way to get Chai working with asynchronous Mocha tests?

Your asynchronous test generates an exception, on failed expect()ations, that cannot be captured by it() because the exception is thrown outside of it()'s scope.

The captured exception that you see displayed is captured using process.on('uncaughtException') under node or using window.onerror() in the browser.

To fix this issue, you need to capture the exception within the asynchronous function called by setTimeout() in order to call done() with the exception as the first parameter. You also need to call done() with no parameter to indicate success, otherwise mocha would report a timeout error because your test function would never have signaled that it was done:

window.expect = chai.expect;

describe( 'my test', function() {
  it( 'should do something', function ( done ) {
    // done() is provided by it() to indicate asynchronous completion
    // call done() with no parameter to indicate that it() is done() and successful
    // or with an error to indicate that it() failed
    setTimeout( function () {
      // Called from the event loop, not it()
      // So only the event loop could capture uncaught exceptions from here
      try {
        expect( true ).to.equal( false );
        done(); // success: call done with no parameter to indicate that it() is done()
      } catch( e ) {
        done( e ); // failure: call done with an error Object to indicate that it() failed
      }
    }, 100 );
    // returns immediately after setting timeout
    // so it() can no longer catch exception happening asynchronously
  }
}

Doing so on all your test cases is annoying and not DRY so you might want to provide a function to do this for you. Let's call this function check():

function check( done, f ) {
  try {
    f();
    done();
  } catch( e ) {
    done( e );
  }
}

With check() you can now rewrite your asynchronous tests as follows:

window.expect = chai.expect;

describe( 'my test', function() {
  it( 'should do something', function( done ) {
    setTimeout( function () {
      check( done, function() {
        expect( true ).to.equal( false );
      } );
    }, 100 );
  }
}

If you like promised, try Chai as Promised + Q, which allow something like this:

doSomethingAsync().should.eventually.equal("foo").notify(done);

Here are my passing tests for ES6/ES2015 promises and ES7/ES2016 async/await. Hope this provides a nice updated answer for anyone researching this topic:

import { expect } from 'chai'

describe('Mocha', () => {
  it('works synchronously', () => {
    expect(true).to.equal(true)
  })

  it('works ansyncronously', done => {
    setTimeout(() => {
      expect(true).to.equal(true)
      done()
    }, 4)
  })

  it('throws errors synchronously', () => {
    return true
    throw new Error('it works')
  })

  it('throws errors ansyncronously', done => {
    setTimeout(() => {
      return done()
      done(new Error('it works'))
    }, 4)
  })

  it('uses promises', () => {
    var testPromise = new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      setTimeout(() => {
        resolve('Hello')
      }, 4)
    })

    testPromise.then(result => {
      expect(result).to.equal('Hello')
    }, reason => {
      throw new Error(reason)
    })
  })

  it('uses es7 async/await', async (done) => {
    const testPromise = new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      setTimeout(() => {
        resolve('Hello')
      }, 4)
    })

    try {
      const result = await testPromise
      expect(result).to.equal('Hello')
      done()
    } catch(err) {
      done(err)
    }
  })

  /*
  *  Higher-order function for use with async/await (last test)
  */
  const mochaAsync = fn => {
    return async (done) => {
      try {
        await fn()
        done()
      } catch (err) {
        done(err)
      }
    }
  }

  it('uses a higher order function wrap around async', mochaAsync(async () => {
    const testPromise = new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      setTimeout(() => {
        resolve('Hello')
      }, 4)
    })

    expect(await testPromise).to.equal('Hello')
  }))
})