qa-author-by-us

qa-author-by-us is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from evolplus/talos. It costs 75 tokens per session (693 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A procedure for writing functional test cases for user stories after a software requirements document has been approved.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to cover normal flows, business rules, post-conditions, and negative cases involving authentication, payments, integrations, retries, and background jobs.
Why use it?
It turns requirements and acceptance scenarios into documented cases and executable test scaffolding, while highlighting missing UI selectors.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: shipped in a Claude Code plugin, but also agents/openai.yaml present.

Part of the talos plugin — 62 skills, 2 commands, 4 hooks shipped together

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 skills/evolplus/talos/qa-author-by-us
Any agent
npx skills add evolplus/talos --skill qa-author-by-us
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/evolplus/talos

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install talos, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 62 skills, 2 commands, 4 hooks.

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-by-us

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evolplus/talos/qa-author-by-us.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/evolplus/talos/qa-author-by-us)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/evolplus/talos/qa-author-by-us"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/evolplus/talos/qa-author-by-us.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 75 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 693 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00075 $0.00693
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00347
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00139
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00069

Measured 5d ago against content hash 97cdca8eee5b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

qa-author-by-us 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 5d 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.

skills/qa-author-by-us/SKILL.md · 66 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 66 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

QA Author By-US

Use

Use this skill for QA-Author by-us mode. Load test-case-author first for TC format and coverage rules, then ui-test-execution for executable spec conventions.

Inputs

  • Signed-off docs/SRS.md
  • Per-US files at docs/user-stories/<US-ID>.md
  • Linked FR files as needed
  • Optional scope filter of US IDs
  • Pass number: 1 or 2

Pass 1 Procedure

  1. For each in-scope US, read its Description, Main Flow, Business Rules, Post-conditions, and Acceptance Scenarios.
  2. Write docs/test-cases/by-us/<US-ID>/functional.md.
  3. Cover:
    • happy path Main Flow;
    • every Business Rule;
    • every Post-condition;
    • negative cases for auth, payments, integrations, retries, and background jobs.
  4. Fill each TC's Executable: path.
  5. Author executable spec scaffolding at the Executable: path. Use one test per TC ID and keep the TC ID at the start of the runner test name.
  6. For non-UI tests, write full assertions.
  7. For UI tests:
    • Use selectors from docs/instrumentation-contract.md when available.
    • If a needed selector is missing, write a literal TODO: instrumentation-contract -- <purpose> marker in the framework's comment syntax and file a paired docs/open-issues.md entry with Category: selector-pending-contract.
  8. Emit plan-update.json notes with selector TODO count.

Pass 2 Procedure

  1. Read docs/instrumentation-contract.md.
  2. For every dispatched TC/spec carrying TODO: instrumentation-contract, replace the marker with the declared selector.
  3. If a selector is still missing from the contract, keep the marker and raise/update an open issue against SA.
  4. Reverse-check coverage: every contract ID for the affected surface should appear in at least one spec. File instrumentation-coverage-gap for unused IDs.
  5. Resolve paired selector-pending-contract issues that were fully backfilled.
  6. Emit plan-update.json notes with selectors backfilled and issues resolved.

Marker Syntax

Use the literal marker so QA-Exec can grep it:

Read the full file on GitHub · 66 lines

Files

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.

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. 5d ago First seen · 66 lines · 75 tokens per session scan A 97cdca8eee5b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

qa-author-by-us is a skill published in the GitHub repository evolplus/talos (8 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 75 tokens to every session and 693 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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