tdd

tdd is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from toverux/cantrips. It costs 33 tokens per session (860 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A test-first development guide for building features and fixing bugs. It uses the red-green-refactor cycle: write a failing test, make it pass, then improve the code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when adding features, fixing bugs, or writing integration tests. It helps decide what behavior to test, where tests belong, and how to name them.
Why use it?
It helps prevent tests that merely copy the implementation and break during harmless code changes. It also gives each change a repeatable way to prove the intended behavior.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: shipped in a Claude Code plugin, but also agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions AGENTS.md.

Part of the cantrips plugin — 24 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when adding features, fixing bugs, or writing integration tests. It helps decide what behavior to test, where tests belong, and how to name them.

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

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install cantrips, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 24 skills.

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 tdd

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/toverux/cantrips/tdd.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/toverux/cantrips/tdd)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/toverux/cantrips/tdd"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/toverux/cantrips/tdd.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 33 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 860 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 $0.00033 $0.00860
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00430
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00172
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00086

Measured yesterday against content hash 7770dd67acb0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tdd 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.

skills/tdd/SKILL.md · 44 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 44 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Test-Driven Development

TDD is the red → green loop. This skill is the reference that makes that loop produce tests worth keeping: what a good test is, where tests go, the anti-patterns, and the rules of the loop. Every section applies on every cycle — consult them before and during the loop, not after.

Match test names and interface vocabulary to the project's domain glossary (the AGENTS.md glossary section, or CONCEPTS.md if the project has one). Working from a spec that folded in the standing decisions — /spec step 2 does, flagging what conflicts — take those decisions as read. Otherwise, where the loop config enables the ADR store, read the ADRs bearing on the area you are touching before naming tests and interfaces, so a seam or an interface does not re-litigate a decision already made. The loop config is docs/agents/cantrips-loop.md; when that doc is absent, the ADR store is off.

What a good test is

Tests verify behavior through public interfaces, not implementation details. Code can change entirely; tests shouldn't. A good test reads like a specification — "user can checkout with valid cart" tells you exactly what capability exists — and survives refactors because it doesn't care about internal structure.

See tests.md for examples and mocking.md for mocking guidelines.

Seams — where tests go

A seam is the public boundary you test at: the interface where you observe behavior without reaching inside (full vocabulary: /codebase-design). Tests live at seams, never against internals.

Test only at agreed seams. Seams the user approved in the spec (via /spec) are already agreed — test at them without re-asking. Anywhere else, write down the seams under test and confirm them with the user before writing any test. You can't test everything — agreeing the seams up front is how testing effort lands on the critical paths and complex logic instead of every edge case.

Bug fixes start red on the bug. The first test is a failing repro of the bug; the fix turns it green. Whether a truly trivial fix warrants a test at all is judgment — defer to your general coding guidelines.

Read the full file on GitHub · 44 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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. yesterday Changed 7770dd67acb0
  2. 7d ago First seen · 44 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A 93c1efeb9a82

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tdd is a skill published in the GitHub repository toverux/cantrips (2 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 860 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 2026-08-31.

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