# Skill — Testing

## Purpose

Plan and create unit, integration, regression, acceptance, and exploratory tests.

## Principles

- Prefer clarity over cleverness.
- Prefer contract-driven tests over guesswork.
- Keep instructions short and routable.
- Use examples where they prevent mistakes.
- Avoid duplicating rules that belong in another file.
- Treat the Product Owner as the final authority.
- Make work testable.
- Capture durable lessons.

## Process

1. Understand the task.
2. Load the smallest useful set of context files.
3. Identify assumptions.
4. Produce the requested artifact.
5. Validate against a checklist.
6. Suggest improvements only when justified.

## Best Practices

- Use headings that agents can scan.
- Use checklists for repeatable work.
- Use tables for routing and decisions.
- Keep examples minimal and practical.
- Derive test cases from preconditions, postconditions, invariants, and failure modes.
- Add at least one test or validation step for each contract boundary when practical.
- Store project-specific facts in project files.
- Store reusable rules in skill files.
- Store role behavior in agent files.
- Store process steps in workflow files.
- Store reusable document formats in templates.

## Anti-Patterns

- Giant single instruction files.
- Conflicting rules in multiple places.
- Vague agent personas with no outputs.
- Uncontrolled self-modifying instructions.
- Rewriting standards without approval.
- Creating documentation no one will use.

## Output Standard

Outputs should be:

- Complete enough to act on
- Concise enough to reuse
- Structured in Markdown
- Easy to review
- Easy to update


---

## Self-Evolution Protocol

This file is allowed to improve over time, but only through a controlled change process.

### When to propose an update

An agent may propose an update when it learns:

- A recurring mistake should be prevented.
- A better workflow has been proven useful.
- A project-specific convention has become stable.
- A prompt pattern produced better results.
- A tool, framework, library, or deployment rule changed.
- The Product Owner approved a new standard.

### How to update this file

Agents must not silently rewrite this file. They must create an improvement proposal using:

`./.ai/evolution/improvement-proposal-template.md`

Every proposal must include:

- File to update
- Current problem
- Proposed change
- Reason
- Risk
- Rollback plan
- Product Owner approval status

### Learning Log

Add durable lessons here only after they are proven useful.

| Date | Lesson Learned | Change Made | Approved By |
|---|---|---|---|
| YYYY-MM-DD | Initial baseline created. | Created file. | Product Owner |