rstest-debugging

A troubleshooting guide for Rstest, a JavaScript and TypeScript test runner. It separates delays and failures between starting the runner, building files, loading modules, running tests, and reporting results.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to investigate startup, build, runtime, logging, memory, module-loading, bundling, and mocking problems in Rstest.
Why use it?
It prevents configuration changes from being made blindly when tests are slow, stuck, crash, or give conflicting timing information. It uses measurements and one change at a time to narrow down the cause.

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/rstackjs/agent-skills/rstest-debugging
Any agent
npx skills add rstackjs/agent-skills --skill rstest-debugging
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rstackjs/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 93 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 614 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 $0.00093 $0.00614
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.00307
Sonnet 5 $0.00019 $0.00123
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00061

Measured 2d ago against content hash 98a2c241e117, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

rstest-debugging 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.

skills/rstest-debugging/SKILL.md · 32 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 32 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Rstest Debugging

Diagnose the measured lifecycle stage before changing configuration. Keep behavior and the test manifest fixed, change one variable at a time, and remove experiments that do not produce a repeatable benefit.

Workflow

  1. Establish comparable single-file and full-scope baselines with references/performance-measurement.md.
  2. Run rstest --trace when supported and classify the cost as host build/startup, runtime load/setup/collect, test bodies/hooks, or CLI/report/teardown overhead.
  3. Use DEBUG=rstest for resolved config and build output. For Rstest 0.11.7+ experimental per-test bundle coverage, follow references/performance-measurement.md. Use Rsdoctor only after evidence points to the compiler. Use verbose reporting or a profiler only after narrowing to runtime files/cases.
  4. If dependency loading or compilation is implicated, read references/dependency-bundling.md. Compare the environment default, bundleDependencies: false, and bundleDependencies: true; neither bundling nor externalization is universally faster.
  5. If a fully mocked heavy module still reaches the build graph, read references/mocked-module-build-graph.md before testing an exact external.
  6. If assets, console output, pools, isolation, or memory dominate, read references/runtime-output-memory.md.
  7. Rerun the representative file and full scope. Keep a change only when behavior, discovery, snapshots, and coverage remain valid and the benefit survives repeated measurement. Remove traces, profiles, and .rstest debug artifacts created by the diagnosis before handing off.

Guardrails

  • Use the project's installed Rstest for final claims. Label local checkout or unreleased diagnostic results separately.
  • Keep Node version, test files, coverage, cache state, environment, workers, and command shape fixed while comparing.
  • Do not add worker durations that overlap or subtract runner/build/tests values without verifying their lifecycle boundaries.
  • Do not treat aggregate process-tree RSS as physical memory; it can double-count shared pages.
  • Do not disable isolation, reduce coverage, silence failures, or change production/test semantics for a benchmark win.
  • Do not stack speculative aliases, externals, compiler hooks, pool settings, or caches. Preserve only the measured minimum.

Read the full file on GitHub · 32 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 files 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 · 32 lines · 93 tokens per session scan A 98a2c241e117

Subscribe to this mod's changes

rstest-debugging is a skill published in the GitHub repository rstackjs/agent-skills (90 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 93 tokens to every session and 614 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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