tdd

tdd is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards. It costs 52 tokens per session (613 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of tdd, MIT.

A test-first bug-fixing guide. TDD, or test-driven development, means writing a test that fails for the bug before changing the code, then making it pass.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for bugs with a clear, cheap test path, especially when adding a focused regression test.
Why use it?
It turns a bug report into a repeatable check and helps prevent the same problem from returning. It skips new tests when a test would be impractical or too expensive.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: user-invocable in frontmatter, but also agents/openai.yaml present.

Part of the pstack plugin — 55 skills, 2 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it for bugs with a clear, cheap test path, especially when adding a focused regression test.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/tdd
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.

Any agent
npx skills add minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards --skill tdd
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install pstack, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 55 skills, 2 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 tdd

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/tdd/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/tdd)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/tdd"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for tdd

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/tdd"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards/tdd.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 52 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 613 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 88% 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 5.1 $0.00052 $0.00613
Opus 5.5 $0.00021 $0.00245
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00010 $0.00123
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00061

Measured 2d ago against content hash 7b34a1316259, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

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 2d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

88% identical to tdd — 2 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.

plugins/pstack/skills/tdd/SKILL.md · 43 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 43 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

TDD Bug Fix

When fixing a bug with a clear, cheap test path, make the broken behavior executable before changing production code. The goal is a focused regression test that fails before the fix and passes after it.

Do not force a test when it would be impractical. If the available test would require broad harness setup, brittle mocks, slow end-to-end infrastructure, production-only state, vague reproduction steps, or large unrelated fixture churn, skip adding a new test and use the closest useful verification instead.

Workflow

  1. Understand the bug. Identify the intended behavior, current behavior, affected path, and smallest observable reproduction.
  2. Choose the narrowest executable check. Prefer the closest unit, component, integration, or regression test already used for that codepath. If no practical test path is obvious, do not create one from scratch just to satisfy the workflow.
  3. Write the failing test first. Add the smallest focused test that would have caught the bug. The test should encode intended behavior, not mirror the current implementation.
  4. Run the new test before fixing. Confirm it fails for the intended reason. If it passes or fails for an unrelated reason, correct the test or reproduction before editing the implementation.
  5. Fix the bug. Make the smallest production change that satisfies the intended behavior while preserving nearby contracts.
  6. Rerun the regression test. Confirm the test now passes.

If a Failing Test Is Impractical

Use the closest executable regression check instead: a targeted script, manual reproduction command, browser automation, snapshot comparison, log assertion, or focused integration check.

Prefer no new test over a bad test. A bad test is one that mostly tests mocks, encodes current implementation details, depends on timing or unrelated global state, needs expensive infrastructure for a small fix, or would be deleted immediately after proving the fix.

Guardrails

  • Do not change tests merely to match a wrong implementation.
  • Do not weaken existing assertions unless the expected behavior has genuinely changed and the reason is clear.
  • Keep the regression test focused on the bug. Avoid broad fixture churn or unrelated coverage expansion.
  • If the bug is flaky, make the test deterministic where possible and document the signal being locked down.
  • If the bug exposes a broader class of failures, first land the focused regression path, then consider additional sibling coverage.

Read the full file on GitHub · 43 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. 2d ago First seen · 43 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A 7b34a1316259

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tdd is a skill published in the GitHub repository minghinmatthewlam/agent-guards (47 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 613 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 88% identical to tdd, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.