Testing

Use this skill when adding, changing, deleting, or reviewing tests in Anarlog, deciding whether a change needs a test, or pruning a test suite. Tests are code we pay for on every CI run and every refactor; keep the ones that catch real regressions and nothing else.

Write a test when

• A bug was fixed: add one regression test that fails without the fix. One, not a matrix of neighbours.
• The behavior is observable by a user or another component: public APIs, tauri-specta bindings, OpenAPI contracts, MCP and CLI output, serializers and parsers, TipTap/ProseMirror JSON conversion.
• Losing it loses data or trust: SQLite migrations and desktop/mobile schema parity, CloudSync and E2EE, auth, billing and Stripe webhooks, permissions and RLS, recording and STT lifecycles.
• It is a real concurrency or recovery invariant: capture start/stop races, crash recovery, retry, cancellation, ordering between actors or tasks.
• It encodes release or store policy that a workflow edit could silently break (for example scripts/desktop-release-provenance.test.mjs).

Do not write a test for

• CSS classes, DOM structure, exact copy, or log text, unless the text is a contract (CLI output parsed by another tool, i18n keys checked by CI).
• Mock call counts or call order when the observable result already proves the behavior.
• Private state, internal helpers already covered through their public caller, or trivial delegation.
• Framework or library behavior (React, TanStack, Tauri, Zustand, Tokio, serde).
• Constants, enum tables, type re-exports, or anything that mirrors source line by line.
• Package or file layout. Structural and import-boundary rules belong in oxlint/ESLint rules, not tests that read files from disk.
• test.skip / #[ignore] without a linked issue.

Budget

• Prefer strengthening an existing test over adding a new one. Prefer one table-driven case over five copies only when the rows exercise different branches.
• A new test must name the regression it prevents in its title.
• Deleting a test is fine when the behavior is covered elsewhere, the code is gone, or it matches the "do not write" list. Say which in the commit or PR.
• Keep fixtures and helpers next to the tests that use them; delete them with the last caller.
• If a module's test file outgrows its source several times over, stop adding and consolidate first.

Test-weight report

Run node .agents/skills/testing/scripts/test-weight.mjs from the repo root to list packages and files whose test code most outweighs their source. Use --help for thresholds and JSON output. Audit the top entries against the rules above before adding more tests to them.

Conventions

Which tests run for which component is listed under "Pre-commit verification" in the root AGENTS.md; the workflows in .github/workflows/ are the source of truth. Axum transport choice for API tests follows ../axum-test-transport/SKILL.md.