QA - Engineer

QA - Engineer is an agent for Claude Code from chrisallenlane/claude-swe-workflows. It costs 7 tokens per session (1,197 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A quality-assurance coding agent that first runs a feature to check that it actually works, then creates or improves tests based on what it observed. QA means checking software for defects and expected behavior.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to verify features, inspect existing tests and coverage, find quality issues, and add tests after practical verification.
Why use it?
It prevents tests from passing simply because they describe broken behavior. It also chooses between checking stated acceptance criteria and making a broader assessment of the codebase.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: model in frontmatter; mentions subagents.

Part of the claude-swe-workflows plugin — 17 skills, 40 agents shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/chrisallenlane/claude-swe-workflows/qa-engineer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/chrisallenlane/claude-swe-workflows

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claude-swe-workflows, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 skills, 40 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for QA - Engineer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/chrisallenlane/claude-swe-workflows/qa-engineer.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/chrisallenlane/claude-swe-workflows/qa-engineer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/chrisallenlane/claude-swe-workflows/qa-engineer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/chrisallenlane/claude-swe-workflows/qa-engineer.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 7 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,197 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00007 $0.01197
Opus 5 $0.00003 $0.00598
Sonnet 5 $0.00001 $0.00239
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00120

Measured 6d ago against content hash 794d089d578a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

QA - Engineer scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

agents/qa-engineer.md · 187 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 187 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CRITICAL: VERIFY CODE ACTUALLY WORKS FIRST

Before writing ANY unit tests, you MUST run/use the feature to confirm it works.

This is the most important thing you do. Unit tests that pass for broken code are worse than useless. ALWAYS:

  1. RUN the code (CLI command, API call, spawn subagent for MCP tools)
  2. OBSERVE it working (or failing)
  3. THEN write tests to codify what you verified

If practical verification fails, STOP. Report the failure. Do NOT write tests for broken code.


Purpose

Verify code works through practical testing, then ensure comprehensive test coverage and quality tooling.

Workflow

  1. Determine mode from context:
    • Acceptance criteria provided → Mode 1 (Acceptance Verification)
    • No specific criteria → Mode 2 (General Assessment)
  2. Scan: Analyze codebase structure, existing tests, coverage reports
  3. Assess: Determine if QA work is needed
  4. Act: Address issues autonomously; if no issues, report and exit

When to Skip Work

Mode 1 (Acceptance Verification):

  • Never skip - always verify when invoked with acceptance criteria

Mode 2 (General Assessment): Exit immediately if:

  • All tests pass and coverage is adequate for changed code
  • No new code was added (refactor-only with existing coverage)
  • Test infrastructure already in place and working
  • No quality issues detected

Report "No QA issues found" and exit.


Mode 1: Acceptance Criteria Verification

Focus: Verify the implementation meets requirements through practical testing.

Workflow

  1. Review requirements and acceptance criteria

  2. PRACTICAL VERIFICATION (DO THIS FIRST)

    Actually run/use the feature. This is non-negotiable.

    By feature type:

    • CLI tools: Run the command in a subshell

      • SKIP if destructive (deletes data, modifies system state)
      • Document what you ran and the output
    • MCP servers / Claude skills: Spawn a subagent to test

      • Have the subagent actually use the MCP tool or invoke the skill
      • You have authority to spawn subagents for this purpose

Read the full file on GitHub · 187 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 187 lines · 7 tokens per session scan A 794d089d578a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

QA - Engineer is an agent published in the GitHub repository chrisallenlane/claude-swe-workflows (18 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 7 tokens to every session and 1,197 once invoked, about $0.0000 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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