Testing Skill

Skill ID: testing
Version: 2.0
Updated: 2026-07-16

Purpose

Activate this skill when A behavior change, defect, integration boundary, or release risk needs automated evidence.

Why

A risk matrix, layered test set, deterministic fixtures, coverage rationale, and executable test report is the minimum reviewable deliverable for this domain. A generic "inspect, change, test" loop omits the domain decisions and failure evidence needed for production use.

Trigger Conditions

A behavior change, defect, integration boundary, or release risk needs automated evidence.
The requester expects an implementation, design, audit, or release decision in this domain.

Required Inputs

The exact target and acceptance criteria.
Repository-pinned versions, environment constraints, and available evidence.
Data classification, effect permissions, and owner where the procedure can affect external systems.

Produced Artifacts

A risk matrix
layered test set
deterministic fixtures
coverage rationale
executable test report.

Procedure

Convert requirements and failure history into observable behaviors and risk-ranked scenarios.
Choose unit, component, contract, integration, end-to-end, property, fuzz, or load tests at the cheapest truthful layer.
Build isolated fixtures with controlled clocks, randomness, network, identity, and data lifecycle.
Implement happy, boundary, negative, concurrency, retry, and recovery cases proportional to risk.
Run repeatability checks, mutation or fault checks where useful, and record excluded risk.

Verification

Tests must fail for the intended defect, pass for the correct behavior, avoid order dependence, and produce actionable diagnostics.

Unhappy Paths and Recovery

Quarantine is temporary and requires an owner and expiry. For nondeterminism, preserve seed and trace. If a dependency cannot be controlled, use a contract test plus a minimal real integration test.

Concrete Example

Test payment idempotency with duplicate delivery, timeout-after-commit, reordered events, and concurrent requests against a real transaction boundary.

Do Not Use This Skill When

Do not chase line coverage without a behavior or risk model.

Tradeoffs

The required domain artifacts and verification cost more than a generic implementation pass, but they expose assumptions, safety gates, and operational limits before release.

Anti-Patterns

Substituting a generic checklist for the domain procedure above.
Claiming a gate passed without retaining the exact command, inspected artifact, or observed signal.
Expanding scope or executing an external effect without target-specific approval.

Enterprise Considerations

Apply repository ownership, separation of duties, data residency and retention, audit evidence, and approved-tool policies to every produced artifact. Redact secrets and regulated data from examples and logs.

Checklist

Trigger and anti-trigger evaluated
Required inputs and domain artifacts complete
Procedure followed in order
Verification evidence retained
Recovery, rollback, owner, and residual risk recorded

Authoritative Sources

Changelog

2.0 (2026-07-16): Replaced the cloned generic procedure with domain-specific artifacts, workflow, recovery, examples, and sources.
1.1: Initial standardized structure.