test-driven-development

A development method that writes a failing test before the code that should make it pass. TDD means test-driven development.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for new behavior, bug fixes, public interface changes, and refactors where existing behavior must remain unchanged.
Why use it?
It defines the expected behavior before implementation and leaves a regression check for future changes.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the mtk plugin — 45 skills, 6 agents, 7 hooks, 1 MCP server 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/moberghr/mtk-agent-toolkit/test-driven-development
Any agent
npx skills add moberghr/mtk-agent-toolkit --skill test-driven-development
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/moberghr/mtk-agent-toolkit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install mtk, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 45 skills, 6 agents, 7 hooks, 1 MCP server.

Per session 28 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 598 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 $0.00028 $0.00598
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00299
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00120
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00060

Measured 3d ago against content hash 6cbc0959f240, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

test-driven-development 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 3d 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.

.claude/skills/test-driven-development/SKILL.md · 67 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 67 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Test-Driven Development

Overview

Use tests as proof of intent, not cleanup after coding. The test should define the behavior change before the implementation makes it pass.

When To Use

  • New behavior in handlers, services, endpoints, routes, or validators
  • Bug fixes that need regression protection
  • Refactors where behavior must stay stable

When NOT To Use

  • Pure renames with no behavioral impact
  • Mechanical formatting-only changes

Workflow

  1. Identify the behavioral contract that is changing.
  2. Write the smallest failing test that proves the missing or broken behavior.
  3. Choose the correct test level:
    • unit for pure logic
    • integration for behavior that depends on framework infrastructure (see the active tech stack skill's ## Test Level Guidance for stack-specific rules)
  4. Use the project-standard test provider. See the active tech stack skill's ## ORM & Data Layer Guidance for stack-specific data layer testing rules.
  5. Implement the minimum production code needed to make the test pass.
  6. Strengthen the test if it only proves "does not throw" or "does not raise".
  7. Run the relevant tests, then broader tests as the task requires.

Rules

  • Bug fixes get regression tests.
  • New public behavior gets at least one meaningful test.
  • Prefer behavior assertions over implementation-detail assertions.
  • Match local test naming and fixture patterns.

Common Rationalizations

See .claude/skills/context-engineering/SKILL.md for the shared table. TDD-specific traps: "I'll add the test after the code works" (then the test proves your implementation, not the intended behavior — write it failing first), "a unit test is enough for this query" (not if the risk lives in translation, provider behavior, or relational semantics — check the tech stack's ORM guidance), and "this assertion is good enough" (if it wouldn't fail on a real regression, it is not good enough).

Red Flags

  • Behavior changed with no new or updated test
  • Assertions only prove no exception or no error
  • In-memory or mock provider used for behavior that depends on real database semantics

Read the full file on GitHub · 67 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. 3d ago First seen · 67 lines · 28 tokens per session scan A 6cbc0959f240

Subscribe to this mod's changes

test-driven-development is a skill published in the GitHub repository moberghr/mtk-agent-toolkit (6 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 598 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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