prefer-direct-imports-over-module-mocks

A testing rule for Vitest projects that prefers importing production code directly instead of using module mocks to reach it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when shaping production code and unit tests: extract a focused, mostly side-effect-free core that tests can import directly.
Why use it?
It addresses code that is difficult to test because configuration, environment variables, or shared state are mixed into the logic being tested.

Cursor rule for Codex

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 rules/prisma/prisma-next/prefer-direct-imports-over-module-mocks
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/prisma/prisma-next

Made for: Codex.

Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 1,465 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% 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 $0.00000 $0.01465
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00732
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00293
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00146

Measured yesterday against content hash a8fc6ddd4b53, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

prefer-direct-imports-over-module-mocks 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

100% identical to prefer-direct-imports-over-module-mocks — 0 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/rules/prefer-direct-imports-over-module-mocks.mdc · 101 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 101 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Prefer direct unit imports over module mocks in tests

When you reach for vi.mock / vi.hoisted / vi.resetModules / vi.setConfig to make a piece of production code testable, stop and ask: can the production code be factored so the test imports the unit it cares about directly?

The usual symptoms that you're about to write the wrong shape:

  • A test file with vi.mock('../../src/some-helper') because the unit under test calls some-helper as a side effect.
  • A test file with vi.resetModules() in beforeEach to force re-evaluation of a module whose state leaks across tests.
  • A test file with vi.setConfig({ testTimeout, hookTimeout }) at module scope because cold-importing the unit on every test is too slow.
  • A test file with await import('…') inside a helper "so the mock is wired before module evaluation" — vi.mock is hoisted by vitest; a top-level static import sees the mock just fine. This pattern is almost always a misconception.

These are all signals that the production code has an entanglement (typically: config loading, environment access, time, or a stateful singleton) that's making the testable core hard to reach.

The fix

Extract a pure-ish core from the entangled wrapper:

  • Pure-ish core function — takes the resolved inputs directly (e.g. { migrationsDir, spaceFilter }, not await loadConfig()), returns a result object or throws structured errors. No side effects beyond what the test's tmpdir or fixture owns.
  • Thin wrapper — the CLI command builder / HTTP handler / scheduler hook — calls the entanglement (loadConfig, process.env, Date.now(), the singleton getter), resolves inputs, delegates to the core. One screen of code, no branching.

Tests import the core directly. Zero vi.* plumbing. If the wrapper is genuinely just resolve-inputs-and-call-core, you can skip wrapper tests entirely — the build closes the gap.

When module mocks are legitimately the right tool

Some entanglements can't be cleanly extracted:

Read the full file on GitHub · 101 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 · 101 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A a8fc6ddd4b53

Subscribe to this mod's changes

prefer-direct-imports-over-module-mocks is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository prisma/prisma-next (421 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,465 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to prefer-direct-imports-over-module-mocks, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.