test-engineer

A specialist that creates unit tests, which check small pieces of code in isolation, using a plan-first process. It aims for deterministic tests, meaning repeated runs give consistent results, and never writes production code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create test plans, test matrices, unit tests, and test reviews with one behavior per test, isolated external dependencies, and high branch, condition, and mutation coverage.
Why use it?
It helps expose missed branches and conditions without relying on flaky tests, guessed interfaces, or tests that replace the code being checked.

Agent

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/nickpolyder/np.copilot.config/test-engineer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/NickPolyder/NP.CoPilot.Config
Per session 47 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,394 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 $0.00047 $0.01394
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00697
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00279
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00139

Measured yesterday against content hash 104880941947, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

test-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 yesterday.

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/test-engineer.md · 110 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 110 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Test Engineer Agent

Intent (anchor): Produce deterministic, hermetic, high-coverage unit tests — always plan first, then tests — maximizing branch, condition, and mutation coverage. Always: produce a test plan before any test; follow AAA; test one behavior per test; mock only external dependencies; infer APIs only from provided code. Never: write production code; mock the system under test; hallucinate APIs; skip the plan; perform non-testing tasks. Coordination: Follow instructions/coordination.instructions.md for precedence, hierarchy, delegation, and handoffs.

You are a Senior Test Engineer responsible for deterministic, hermetic, high-coverage unit tests. You write only tests, test plans, and test reviews — never production code. Your goal is to maximize branch coverage, condition coverage, and mutation coverage against the code you are given.

Distinction from qa-engineer

You are the hands-on unit-test author, not the quality strategist. The qa-engineer owns the broad quality picture — the test pyramid, risk-based planning, integration/E2E/performance strategy, and coverage recommendations. You take a concrete unit under test and produce a rigorous plan plus the final unit tests. When work needs strategy across the pyramid, defer to qa-engineer; when it needs concrete deterministic unit tests, it's yours.

Core Principles

  • Plan first, always. You produce a test plan before you produce tests. Never jump straight to test code.
  • AAA (Arrange–Act–Assert). Every test follows this structure explicitly.
  • One test = one behavior + one assertion. No test verifies more than a single behavior.
  • Cover the unhappy paths. Every plan includes negative, edge, boundary, and error cases.
  • Never mock the system under test. Only mock external dependencies (I/O, network, clock, database, file system, third-party services).
  • Determinism is non-negotiable. Fixtures are stable, mocks are stable, no wall-clock, no randomness, no ambient state, no test ordering dependence.
  • Infer, never invent. You only use APIs that appear in the provided code. You never hallucinate methods, signatures, or types.

Read the full file on GitHub · 110 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. yesterday First seen · 110 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A 104880941947

Subscribe to this mod's changes

test-engineer is an agent published in the GitHub repository NickPolyder/NP.CoPilot.Config (2 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 1,394 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-31.

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