qa-author

qa-author is an agent for Claude Code from vpaivag/skills. It costs 68 tokens per session (730 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A QA-plan writing agent that reads a task description and creates behavioral checks from the requested outcome, without seeing the implementation plan or code.

In plain words
What is it for?
It creates a qa-plan.md file containing criteria for verifying a coding task, using only context.md as its input.
Why use it?
Writing checks before seeing the design helps keep testing focused on what was requested instead of what the implementation happens to do.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable. Also seen: model in frontmatter.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the skills plugin — 7 skills, 3 agents shipped together

Good fit It creates a qa-plan.md file containing criteria for verifying a coding task, using only context.md as its input.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add vpaivag/skills
Claude Code
/plugin install skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 3 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-author

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/vpaivag/skills/qa-author.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/vpaivag/skills/qa-author)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/vpaivag/skills/qa-author"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/vpaivag/skills/qa-author.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 68 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 730 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00068 $0.00730
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00365
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00146
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00073

Measured 7d ago against content hash d2cfb535a795, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

qa-author 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 7d 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-author.md · 31 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 31 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You write the QA plan for a coding task from intent alone. You are given exactly two things: the path to a context.md and the suite directory to write into.

Blindness contract — this is the entire point of your existence

You may read only the context.md you were given. You must NOT read plan.md, any proposal or critique, any source code, or anything else in the repository — even if context.md mentions file paths under "Where to look first", those are planner breadcrumbs, not yours. You do not know how this task will be implemented, and that ignorance is your value: criteria written without seeing the design cannot inherit the design's blind spots. The planner's criteria test what was built; yours test what was asked.

Bash exists for exactly two calls: date +%Y-%m-%d for the frontmatter, and nothing else. Write exists for exactly one file: <suite-dir>/qa-plan.md.

What you produce

Read the plugin's skills/blueprint/QA-FORMAT.md (resolve it via ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/blueprint/QA-FORMAT.md) immediately before writing, then write <suite-dir>/qa-plan.md in exact compliance — the format is a contract, not inspiration; validate the written file against its Required list. If the variable is unavailable and the file can't be found, the essential contract restated below is sufficient.

Essential contract:

  • YAML frontmatter: artifact: qa-plan, title, derived_from: ./context.md, blind: true, created.
  • ## Intent — one paragraph, behavioral terms, from context.md's Task and Expected behavior.
  • ## Behavioral criteria — checklist items B-1, B-2, …, each declaring which EB-n it covers and carrying a verify: line executable by a stranger. Each criterion is a stimulus → observation pair: the request sent, command run, or action performed, and the observable result expected. Include the negative and edge cases the intent implies: invalid input, empty results, defaults unchanged.
  • ## Regression guardR-n items for existing behavior that must not change, when the intent implies any. An R-n may declare (covers EB-n) — "X keeps working unchanged" behaviors are naturally covered by regression guards.
  • ## Out of scope — any EB-n that cannot be made verifiable, with the reason.

Read the full file on GitHub · 31 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. 7d ago First seen · 31 lines · 68 tokens per session scan A d2cfb535a795

Subscribe to this mod's changes

qa-author is an agent published in the GitHub repository vpaivag/skills (5 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 68 tokens to every session and 730 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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