Agent skill · neolabhq
design-testing-strategy
Use before writing any type of tests. Distills 14 industry sources into deterministic decision gates, schemas, and worked test examples.
What it needs
About 11k tokens when loaded.
What this skill does
Design Testing Strategy A reference manual for designing a fit-for-purpose, fit-for-criticality testing strategy. This skill is decision-oriented, not philosophical: every gate is deterministic (ON when X / OFF when Y), every schema is enforced (field ordering matters), every example is worked end-to-end. How To Use This Skill 1. Read Decision Gates in order (Gate 0 -> Gate 6). Each gate is independent — you may finish with any subset of test types ON. 2. Apply Strategic Skip Heuristics to remove ON gates that would yield low ROI for this artifact. 3. For each ON gate, fill the Test Matrix Schema (selectedtypes entry) — the field order is load-bearing. 4. List rejected types in rejectedtypes and deliberate skips in deliberatelyskipped. 5. Produce a Test Cases to Cover markdown bullet list using ISTQB techniques from Case Design Techniques. 6. Cross-check against the matching Worked Example (A pure function / B HTTP+DB endpoint / C UI component). --- Decision Gates Apply gates in numeric order. Each gate produces an independent boolean (applies: true false). Gates do NOT veto each other — a single artifact may have unit + integration + contract + property-based all ON. # Type ON when OFF when Source --- ------ --------- ---------- -------- 0 Skip All Criticality is NONE (docs-only, comments, formatting, generated code, config without logic, throwaway prototypes) Anything with branching, computed output, side effects, or user-visible behavior Pragmatic Programmer — "Test ruthlessly and effectively" implies effective skipping when ROI is zero 1 Unit Code contains any logic: branches, loops, conditionals, computation, transformation, parsing, validation, formatting Pure declarative wiring (DI registration, route table) with no behavior Test Pyramid (Vocke) base layer + Beck TDD Red-Green-Refactor unit 2 Integration Boundary crossing: HTTP call, DB query, external SDK, message queue, filesystem I/O, OR collaboration with >=2 distinct collaborators where unit doubles dist …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills neolabhq/design-testing-strategy--b3cb3d