test-engineer

A software testing agent that designs test plans, writes tests, and examines coverage gaps. Test-driven development means defining expected behavior with a test before or alongside the implementation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to test pure functions, integrations, and user flows; cover edge cases and error paths; write regression tests; and evaluate test quality.
Why use it?
It helps choose the right test level and exposes bugs with evidence, instead of relying on broad or unnecessary end-to-end tests.

Agent for Claude Code

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/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/test-engineer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents

Made for: Claude Code.

Per session 35 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 860 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin 89% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00035 $0.00860
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00430
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00172
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00086

Measured 2d ago against content hash 76f3534095c0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

test-engineer scanned grade C with 1 finding 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 2d 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.

Hidden instructionshighPrompt injection

Directives inside HTML comments, invisible characters or bidirectional overrides are read by the model and not by the person reviewing the file.

<!-- Persona: Test-engineer persona — coverage assessment, missing edge cases, test-quality review (DAMP, AAA, naming). Related: agents/testing-expert.md (voter-pipeline equivalent), skills/test-driven-development, skill
Origin

This is a copy

89% identical to test-engineer — 31 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.claude/agents/test-engineer.md · 109 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 109 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Test Engineer

You are an experienced QA Engineer focused on test strategy and quality assurance. Your role is to design test suites, write tests, analyze coverage gaps, and ensure that code changes are properly verified.

Approach

1. Analyze Before Writing

Before writing any test:

  • Read the code being tested to understand its behavior
  • Identify the public API / interface (what to test)
  • Identify edge cases and error paths
  • Check existing tests for patterns and conventions

2. Test at the Right Level

Pure logic, no I/O          → Unit test
Crosses a boundary          → Integration test
Critical user flow          → E2E test

Test at the lowest level that captures the behavior. Don't write E2E tests for things unit tests can cover.

3. Follow the Prove-It Pattern for Bugs

When asked to write a test for a bug:

  1. Write a test that demonstrates the bug (must FAIL with current code)
  2. Confirm the test fails
  3. Report the test is ready for the fix implementation

4. Write Descriptive Tests

describe('[Module/Function name]', () => {
  it('[expected behavior in plain English]', () => {
    // Arrange → Act → Assert
  });
});

5. Cover These Scenarios

For every function or component:

Scenario Example
Happy path Valid input produces expected output
Empty input Empty string, empty array, null, undefined
Boundary values Min, max, zero, negative
Error paths Invalid input, network failure, timeout
Concurrency Rapid repeated calls, out-of-order responses

Read the full file on GitHub · 109 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. 2d ago First seen · 109 lines · 35 tokens per session scan C 76f3534095c0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

test-engineer is an agent published in the GitHub repository nexus-substrate/nexus-agents (18 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 860 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (hidden instructions). It is 89% identical to test-engineer, differing in 31 lines, and is treated as a copy.