step-development

BDD Step Development

Develop BDD step definitions for a feature by parsing Gherkin, diffing against existing steps, and walking a structured implementation workflow. Each step goes through research, review, implement, and verify phases.

When to Use

• /qa-bdd-step-development tests/bdd/features/my-feature.feature -- wire ALL missing steps
• /qa-bdd-step-development tests/bdd/features/auth-*.feature -- fix broken steps (re-enumerates from Gherkin)

Does NOT Cover

• Writing .feature files (write Gherkin first, then invoke this)
• Non-BDD tests (unit tests, integration tests)

Protocol

Step 1: Enumerate Missing Steps

Parse Gherkin and diff against existing step definitions:

# 1. Find all step text in the feature file(s)
grep -E '^\s+(Given|When|Then|And|But) ' tests/bdd/features/<feature>.feature \
  | sed 's/^\s*//' | sort -u > /tmp/gherkin_steps.txt

# 2. Find all registered step patterns
grep -rn '@given\|@when\|@then' tests/bdd/steps/ \
  | grep -oP "(?:parse|re)\(['\"])(.*?)(['\"])" | sort -u > /tmp/existing_patterns.txt

# 3. Diff -- unmatched lines are missing steps
# (Manual matching needed -- patterns use parsers.parse/re)

Alternatively, use ast-grep for structural queries:

# Find all existing Given steps
ast-grep --pattern '@given($_)' tests/bdd/steps/

# Find all existing When steps
ast-grep --pattern '@when($_)' tests/bdd/steps/

# Find all existing Then steps
ast-grep --pattern '@then($_)' tests/bdd/steps/

# Steps using parsers.parse()
ast-grep --pattern '@given(parsers.parse($_))' tests/bdd/steps/

Group missing steps into batches of 3-5 by scenario affinity (same scenario or related scenarios that share Given context).

Step 2: Research Each Batch

For each batch of missing steps:

1. Identify test level (see decision table below)
2. Find related production code that the steps will exercise
3. Find existing step patterns to follow (look at neighboring step files)
4. Identify factories available for test data setup