Agent skill · steipete
test-audit
Invoke whenever writing, changing, reviewing, or sweeping tests. Authoring gate for new tests plus audit workflow for low-value, implementation-coupled, or duplicative tests and the test-only production seams they demand.
What it needs
About 3k tokens when loaded.
What this skill does
Test Audit Two modes, one value bar. Authoring mode gates every new or changed test at write time. Audit mode runs focused sweeps of tests that re-assert source, duplicate stronger proof, couple behavior to implementation, or keep test-only production seams alive. Continue broad audits as separate coherent follow-up PRs; optimize for confidence, not deletion count. Authoring gate Before adding any test, answer four questions; a missing answer means do not add it yet: 1. What observable behavior, invariant, or independent contract does it protect? 2. What credible regression makes it fail? 3. Why does existing coverage not already catch that failure? Prefer extending a table-driven case or shared fixture over a near-duplicate test; consolidate duplicated setup in the same change. 4. Does it need a production seam (export, flag, wrapper, injection hook) that no production caller needs? If yes, move the test to the real boundary instead. A test that would break under behavior-preserving refactoring is asserting implementation, not behavior; rewrite it at the owning boundary before landing it. Bug regression tests must fail on the pre-fix code for the intended reason and pass after the owner-boundary repair. A regression test that never demonstrably failed proves the mock, not the fix. Value bar Tests justify their maintenance cost by protecting behavior, a credible regression, or an independently meaningful contract. A test that must change for behavior-preserving source reorganization is suspect, not automatically deletable. Before judging a candidate, read the complete test and production owner, its entry point, callers, callees, sibling implementations, overlapping tests, CI routing, and relevant history. Read root and scoped AGENTS.md files first. When the test claims dependency-backed behavior, inspect the dependency source or types directly. Discovery Keep discovery read-only and report evidence before editing. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills steipete/test-audit