ragtime: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

.github/instructions/testing.instructions.md

ragtime testing.instructions.md is an instructions file for GitHub Copilot from mattv8/ragtime. It costs 644 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A testing guide for a Python application using FastAPI, Prisma, and external language-model services. It recommends Python's built-in unittest framework, pytest for focused runs, and integration tests that exercise real application flows.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing tests for FastAPI routes, databases, network calls, or language-model integrations, especially when deciding what to mock.
Why use it?
It gives developers clear testing boundaries and reduces false confidence caused by excessive mocking or shared test state.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

Written for GitHub Copilot: a Copilot instructions file.

This is mattv8/ragtime's own configuration. It tells GitHub Copilot how to work on ragtime itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything ragtime configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to mattv8/ragtime. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattv8/ragtime/beta/.github/instructions/testing.instructions.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mattv8/ragtime

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

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When invoked 644 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
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.
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ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00644 $0.00644
Opus 5.5 $0.00258 $0.00258
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00129 $0.00129
Haiku 4.5 $0.00064 $0.00064

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 39ab154e7dc7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ragtime testing.instructions.md 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 2mo 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.

.github/instructions/testing.instructions.md · 72 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Testing Instructions

Strategy

  • Use Python's stdlib unittest framework (unittest.TestCase and unittest.IsolatedAsyncioTestCase).
  • Fast and targeted execution using pytest.
  • Emphasize integration tests that test the actual flow of the application. Avoid overly mocking databases or core infrastructure where possible unless absolutely necessary for external boundaries (like network calls).

Dirs & patterns

  • Python tests: tests/test_*.py
  • Schema reference: prisma/schema.prisma

BASIC principles

  • Readability: descriptive names; flat setup/asserts
  • Autonomy: no shared state/order deps
  • Speed: prefer integrated tests over heavily mocked ones. Mock only external third-party services (HTTPX) and LLM backends, but use real DB infrastructure when applicable.
  • Clarity: one assertion or tight group; comment non-obvious setup

FastAPI Route Testing

  • Avoid firing up a real ASGI server or using TestClient for every logic test unless doing an end-to-end route check.
  • When unit-testing internal route logic, you can build raw starlette.requests.Request objects and manually call route functions with them:
    from starlette.requests import Request
    
    
    def _build_request(path: str) -> Request:
        return Request(
            {
                "type": "http",
                "method": "GET",
                "path": path,
                "headers": [(b"host", b"ragtime.dev")],
                "scheme": "https",
            }
        )
    

Boundaries and Isolation

  • Patch specific external boundaries using mock.patch.object and SimpleNamespace (e.g. LLM calls or external APIs).
  • For database access, prefer using a real test database configuration over replacing Prisma repository objects with mock structures.
  • To test asyncio streams and background tasks, create fake async iterators to mock FastAPI streaming responses if needed.

Patterns

import unittest
from types import SimpleNamespace
from unittest import mock


class MyFeatureTests(unittest.IsolatedAsyncioTestCase):
    async def test_does_behavior(self) -> None:
        fake_service = mock.AsyncMock(return_value="mock_value")

        with mock.patch("ragtime.my_module.my_dependency", fake_service):
            result = await do_something()
            self.assertEqual(result, "mock_value")

Read the full file on GitHub · 72 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. 2mo ago First seen · 72 lines · 644 tokens per session scan A 39ab154e7dc7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ragtime testing.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository mattv8/ragtime (33 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 644 tokens to every session, about $0.0026 per session on Opus 5.5. 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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