qa-start

qa-start is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from petrkindlmann/qa-skills. It costs 130 tokens per session (1,689 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guided starting process for adding quality checks to a project that has no organised testing setup. It builds project context, a testing strategy, and a test plan in sequence.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for a new project with no tests, an existing project with no QA foundation, or a restart after tests and coverage have been lost.
Why use it?
It gives a clear starting point when nobody has documented what should be tested or how. It also helps decide where to begin when an old project’s testing practice has been neglected.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions Claude Code; mentions Codex.

Good fit Use it for a new project with no tests, an existing project with no QA foundation, or a restart after tests and coverage have been lost.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/petrkindlmann/qa-skills/qa-start
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 petrkindlmann/qa-skills --skill qa-start
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/petrkindlmann/qa-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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-start

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/petrkindlmann/qa-skills/qa-start"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/petrkindlmann/qa-skills/qa-start.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 130 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,689 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. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 23 May 2026
  • Snyk pass 23 May 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00130 $0.01689
Opus 5 $0.00065 $0.00844
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00338
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00169

Measured 9d ago against content hash 6121480bb12c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

qa-start 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 9d 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-start/SKILL.md · 110 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 110 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

When to Use This

Reach for qa-start whenever the answer to "where do we start with QA?" is unclear and no QA foundation exists yet:

  • A brand-new project with no test infrastructure.
  • Joining an existing codebase that has no QA setup at all — old code, but quality work was never formalized. Still qa-start, not qa-project-bootstrap (that one is for joining a team that already has tests).
  • Rebooting QA after neglect — tests deleted, coverage collapsed, no strategy. You are rebooting QA from the foundation up.

If the codebase already has a real test suite and you are a QA engineer ramping onto the team, use qa-project-bootstrap instead.

Quick Route

Pick your entry point — skip any step whose artifact already exists.

Situation Start at
No QA at all (no context file, no strategy, no plan) Step 1
.agents/qa-project-context.md already populated Skip Step 1 — invoke test-strategy (Step 2)
Context file AND strategy document both exist Skip Steps 1 and 2 — invoke test-planning (Step 3)
All three done — what next? After Step 3
A QA engineer ramping onto an existing team with existing tests Not this skill — see qa-project-bootstrap

Step 1: Capture Project Context

Skill: qa-project-context

Creates .agents/qa-project-context.md in your project root. That file records your tech stack, test frameworks, CI/CD pipeline, environments, coverage goals, risk areas, and team structure. Every later skill reads it, so it never asks you the same questions twice.

What to do: Invoke qa-project-context and work through its discovery questions. The skill walks each section interactively, discovers what it can from the repo, and writes the file.

Read the full file on GitHub · 110 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. 9d ago First seen · 110 lines · 130 tokens per session scan A 6121480bb12c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

qa-start is a skill published in the GitHub repository petrkindlmann/qa-skills (114 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 130 tokens to every session and 1,689 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-08-30.

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