Automation Interview Prep

A preparation guide for software development engineer in test (SDET), quality-assurance automation, and test-engineer interviews. It covers coding, test-framework design, API testing, scenarios, and STAR answers, which describe situations, tasks, actions, and results.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to prepare for recruiter screens, coding rounds, framework-design discussions, API-testing tasks, scenario questions, and questions for interviewers.
Why use it?
It turns a broad interview process into separate practice areas and helps you explain real testing experience clearly instead of relying on memorised answers.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/pramoddutta/qaskills/automation-interview-prep
Any agent
npx skills add PramodDutta/qaskills --skill automation-interview-prep
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PramodDutta/qaskills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,251 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 $0.00038 $0.01251
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00626
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00250
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00125

Measured yesterday against content hash da8ed164e99b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Automation Interview Prep 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 yesterday.

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.

seed-skills/automation-interview-prep/SKILL.md · 113 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 113 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Automation Interview Prep

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when the user:

  • Has an SDET, QA Automation, or Test Engineer interview scheduled
  • Mentions: "SDET interview", "automation interview", "QA interview questions", "framework design round"
  • Wants STAR stories built from their testing experience
  • Needs a preparation plan matched to a specific company's loop

Core Capabilities

  • Map the standard SDET loop and prepare each round separately
  • Generate STAR stories from defect catches, flake hunts, and framework work
  • Drill framework-design narration with trade-off vocabulary
  • Prepare API-testing tasks and test-the-function exercises
  • Build answers for the scenario classics without sounding scripted
  • Produce a question list to ask interviewers that signals seniority

The Standard SDET Loop

Round What actually happens Preparation focus
Recruiter screen Stack verification, salary bands, notice period 90-second experience summary, exact tool years
Coding screen Easy/medium algorithms or string/array work in your language 20-30 problems, narrate while coding
Framework design "Design test automation for X" on a whiteboard/doc Architecture narration with trade-offs
API/practical Test this endpoint, review this test code, find the bugs Postman/code fluency, boundary thinking out loud
Scenario "How would you test a login page / payment flow / search" Structured decomposition, not feature listing
Behavioral STAR stories, conflict, quality advocacy 6 prepared stories with numbers

Coding Screen Reality

SDET coding bars sit below SWE bars at most companies but are rising. Cover:

  • Strings and arrays: reversal, deduplication, frequency counts, two pointers
  • Maps and sets: first non-repeating character, anagram grouping
  • Simple recursion and iteration conversions
  • Language fluency: collections, string methods, error handling in YOUR primary language

Narrate constantly. SDET interviewers weight communication above optimal complexity; a clean O(n log n) explained well beats a silent O(n).

Read the full file on GitHub · 113 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. yesterday First seen · 113 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A da8ed164e99b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Automation Interview Prep is a skill published in the GitHub repository PramodDutta/qaskills (214 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 1,251 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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