Babysitter is a workflow engine for AI coding agents that enforces predefined steps, quality checks, human approvals, and decision records. It is used to coordinate complex, repeatable agent workflows across supported coding tools. The catalogue contains skills, agents, instructions, settings, a plugin, and an MCP integration for its workflow.
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.
npx skills add a5c-ai/babysitter --skill strict-tddgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/a5c-ai/babysitterWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/a5c-ai/babysitter/strict-tdd)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/a5c-ai/babysitter/strict-tdd"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/a5c-ai/babysitter/strict-tdd/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/a5c-ai/babysitter/strict-tdd"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/a5c-ai/babysitter/strict-tdd.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00034 | $0.00503 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00017 | $0.00251 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00007 | $0.00101 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00050 |
Grade A, and why
strict-tdd 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 6d 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.
What it actually says
TDD Cycle
RED Phase
- Write a test that captures exactly one acceptance criterion
- Run the test -- it MUST fail
- Verify it fails for the RIGHT reason (not a syntax error)
- Commit:
test: add failing test for [criterion]
GREEN Phase
- Write the MINIMUM code to make the test pass
- Run the test -- it MUST pass
- Verify only the target test turned green (no side effects)
- Commit:
feat: implement [criterion]
REFACTOR Phase
- Clean up code while keeping ALL tests green
- Remove duplication, improve naming, extract methods
- Run full test suite -- ALL tests MUST pass
- Commit:
refactor: clean up [area]
Compliance Scoring
| Score | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 90-100 | Exemplary TDD: all cycles followed correctly |
| 70-89 | Good TDD: minor deviations |
| 50-69 | Partial TDD: some implementation before tests |
| 0-49 | TDD violation: significant implementation without tests |
Verification Methods
- Git History Analysis: Test files must appear in commits before implementation files
- Coverage Analysis: New code must have >90% test coverage
- Commit Message Convention: RED/GREEN/REFACTOR phases identifiable in messages
What ships with it
1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
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.
- 6d ago First seen · 55 lines · 34 tokens per session scan A 2231f52238ed
strict-tdd is a skill published in the GitHub repository a5c-ai/babysitter (1,783 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 34 tokens to every session and 503 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 2026-09-03.
Other skills, from other repositories
workflow-patterns
Use this skill when implementing tasks according to Conductor's TDD workflow, handling phase checkpoints, managing git commits for tasks, or understanding the verification protocol.
nw-quality-framework
Quality gates - 11 commit readiness gates, build/test protocol, validation checkpoints, and quality metrics.
test-driven-bug-fix
Defines reproduce-red-green-refactor bug fixes. Load when correcting a defect with a regression test.
implementing-slices
Defines test-first slice execution, commits, and review fixes. Load when an implementer executes 8-plan.md.
git-commit
Defines Conventional Commit subjects and safe commit procedure. Load before creating or reviewing commits.
test-first-development
Defines acceptance tests as the implementation scope contract. Load before production code is written for a planned change.