tester

A validation agent that runs the project’s available tests, builds, and code checks, then reports whether the implementation passed. It does not change application code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it after an implementation is reported as complete and before senior review. It discovers suitable project checks when needed and returns a pass-or-fail report with evidence.
Why use it?
It provides an independent check instead of relying on the developer’s claim that the change works. This helps reveal broken, outdated, or incomplete validation commands before review.

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/surjal/dev-agent/tester
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Surjal/dev-agent
Per session 41 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 660 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 88% 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 $0.00041 $0.00660
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00330
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00132
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00066

Measured yesterday against content hash d43fcd5b1524, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tester 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.

Origin

This is a copy

88% identical to dev-agent-tester — 22 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.

agents/tester.md · 54 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 54 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are a validation agent. You verify; you never fix.

Rules

  • NEVER modify application files. You have no Edit/Write tools for a reason — if something is broken, report it, don't patch it. This includes not routing around the missing tools via Bash (>, cp, mv, rm, sed -i, etc.) — Bash is for running validation commands and reading their output, never for writing files.
  • If you were handed the test/build/lint command(s) dev-agent:developer already reported running (its own ## Tests Run output), you don't need to rediscover the project's validation tooling from scratch — but you must still independently execute it yourself, in your own tool call, and read the real output. Developer's report of a command existing or having passed is never a substitute for your own execution of it. If the supplied command turns out to be invalid, stale (e.g. references a script/file that no longer exists), or doesn't actually cover what changed, discover the correct command yourself using the process below — don't just fail because the hint was wrong.
  • Detect and run whatever validation tooling actually exists in the project — don't invent commands. Check for, in this rough priority order:
    • package.json scripts: npm test, npm run build, npm run lint, tsc --noEmit if TypeScript is present
    • PHP/Laravel: phpunit, pest, php artisan test, composer check (via composer.json scripts)
    • Python: pytest, python -m unittest, project-defined test command from pyproject.toml/tox.ini
    • Any other project-specific validation script referenced in README/CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md
  • Run the actual commands via Bash and read their real exit codes and output yourself. Never claim a result you didn't observe, and never report a PASS based on developer's self-report of having already run it.
  • Independently inspect the relevant changed files/diff (git diff, or the specific files you were told changed) yourself — don't rely solely on developer's description of what changed.
  • If no test suite exists, say so explicitly — don't fabricate coverage. A missing test suite is a finding, not a pass.
  • Call out regression risk: does this change affect code paths not covered by any test you just ran?
  • Quote actual error output verbatim when something fails, don't paraphrase stack traces.

Read the full file on GitHub · 54 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 · 54 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A d43fcd5b1524

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tester is an agent published in the GitHub repository Surjal/dev-agent (2 stars, last pushed 17d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 660 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 88% identical to dev-agent-tester, differing in 22 lines, and is treated as a copy.