exploratory-testing-techniques

exploratory-testing-techniques is a skill for Claude Code from shennawardana23/skillme. It costs 105 tokens per session (1,392 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A structured way to test software by learning, designing tests, and running them at the same time. Instead of following a fixed script, the tester chooses the next test based on what earlier tests reveal.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan and run unscripted testing sessions, investigate an ambiguous feature, and record possible bugs and useful observations.
Why use it?
It helps find bugs in new or unclear features where no complete test plan exists. Charters, time limits, notes, and expected results keep the exploration focused.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the skillme plugin — 137 skills, 2 commands shipped together

Good fit Use it to plan and run unscripted testing sessions, investigate an ambiguous feature, and record possible bugs and useful observations.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/shennawardana23/skillme/exploratory-testing-techniques
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 shennawardana23/skillme --skill exploratory-testing-techniques
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/shennawardana23/skillme

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install skillme, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 137 skills, 2 commands.

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 exploratory-testing-techniques

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/shennawardana23/skillme/exploratory-testing-techniques/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/shennawardana23/skillme/exploratory-testing-techniques)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/shennawardana23/skillme/exploratory-testing-techniques"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/shennawardana23/skillme/exploratory-testing-techniques/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 exploratory-testing-techniques

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/shennawardana23/skillme/exploratory-testing-techniques"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/shennawardana23/skillme/exploratory-testing-techniques.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 105 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,392 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.
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 $0.00105 $0.01392
Opus 5 $0.00053 $0.00696
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00278
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00139

Measured 9d ago against content hash d1a44333555a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

exploratory-testing-techniques 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/exploratory-testing-techniques/SKILL.md · 114 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 114 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Exploratory Testing Techniques

Exploratory testing (ET), as defined by James Bach and Michael Bolton's Rapid Software Testing methodology, is simultaneous learning, test design, and test execution — the tester designs the next test based on what the last one revealed, rather than following a pre-written script. It is a disciplined skill, not "just clicking around": the discipline comes from charters, time-boxing, and oracles, not from a script.

Session-Based Test Management (SBTM)

Structure exploration so its value is traceable, per Jonathan Bach's Session-Based Test Management:

  1. Write a charter before the session starts: Explore <area> with <resources/tools> to discover <information>. Example: "Explore the discount-stacking checkout flow with expired and near-expiry promo codes to discover incorrect price calculations."
  2. Time-box the session — 60-120 minutes is typical. Longer sessions lose focus; shorter ones don't give exploration room to follow leads.
  3. Explore and take notes continuously — not just when you find a bug. Note what you tried, what you expected, what happened, and anything that felt off but wasn't clearly wrong yet.
  4. Log bugs immediately, with repro steps, while the state is still in front of you — see bug-triage-and-severity-classification for what happens to the report next.
  5. Write a session report / debrief: charter, session duration, % of time on-charter vs. opportunity testing (following an unplanned but promising lead), bugs found, issues/questions raised, areas still uncovered. A session without a report is testing debt — the value of ET is in what's traceable afterward, not just in the tester's memory.

Oracles: how you judge "is this actually wrong"

Without a full spec, use Michael Bolton's HICCUPPS(F) heuristic to decide whether an observed behavior is a bug:

  • History — does it behave differently than it used to?
  • Image — does it embarrass the company/product's reputation?
  • Comparable products — do similar products/features behave differently in a way that suggests this is wrong?
  • Claims — does it contradict documentation, specs, or marketing claims?
  • User expectations — would a reasonable user be surprised?
  • Product — is it internally consistent with the rest of the product?
  • Purpose — does it defeat the purpose the feature was built for?
  • Statutes — does it violate a law/regulation (e.g. accessibility, data privacy)?
  • Familiar problems — does it resemble a known bug pattern/class?

Read the full file on GitHub · 114 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 9d ago First seen · 114 lines · 105 tokens per session scan A d1a44333555a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

exploratory-testing-techniques is a skill published in the GitHub repository shennawardana23/skillme (2 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 105 tokens to every session and 1,392 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 2026-08-31.

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