test-driven-development

A test-first development method called TDD, short for Test-Driven Development. It requires writing a failing test, adding the smallest code that passes it, and then cleaning up the design.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for changes that specifically call for test-first or Red-Green-Refactor development, following the required cycle instead of writing tests only after the code.
Why use it?
It makes the expected behavior explicit before implementation and provides immediate evidence that the new code works. This skill is used only when TDD or an equivalent process is explicitly required.

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/tx1207/hello-scholar/test-driven-development
Any agent
npx skills add Tx1207/hello-scholar --skill test-driven-development
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Tx1207/hello-scholar

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 37 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,076 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 $0.00037 $0.03076
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.01538
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00615
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00308

Measured 2d ago against content hash 252007b82bfd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

test-driven-development 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/test-driven-development/SKILL.md · 399 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 399 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

Explicit Entry Gate

Enter this skill only when one of these facts is present:

  1. The user explicitly requests $test-driven-development, TDD, test-first, or Red-Green-Refactor.
  2. The current Approved Task explicitly requires a TDD Process or explicitly names TDD, test-first, or Red-Green-Refactor as its process.

A request to add tests, or Validation: npm test, is ordinary implementation and validation; it does not enter this skill by itself. Do not infer TDD from task type, testing language, or validation commands.

If neither fact is present, exit this skill immediately. Follow the applicable AGENTS/Task instructions for ordinary implementation and validation; do not impose this TDD workflow or redo existing code.

After entry, follow the full process below. Tests after are not TDD. If a user who explicitly requested TDD later calls the work a throwaway prototype, generated code, or configuration file, ask whether they are revoking the TDD request; do not choose that exception yourself.

Overview

Write the test first. Watch it fail. Write minimal code to pass.

Core principle: If you didn't watch the test fail, you don't know if it tests the right thing.

Confirm the Seam

Before RED, name the public interface or observable behavior that this slice will test—the seam. Reuse a seam explicitly named in the user request or Approved Task; otherwise ask one bounded question: "What public interface or observable behavior should this slice verify?" Do not write evidence against an unconfirmed internal collaborator or private method.

Completion criterion: The current slice has one confirmed seam and one observable behavior.

Violating the letter of the rules is violating the spirit of the rules.

Evidence Artifacts

In this skill, a "test" means the cheapest evidence artifact that can fail for the right reason before implementation. For ordinary deterministic code, that is usually a unit or integration test. For AI, agent, RAG, prompt, skill, or research work, it may be an eval case, trajectory check, benchmark smoke run, scorer, or pressure scenario.

Read the full file on GitHub · 399 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 · 399 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A 252007b82bfd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

test-driven-development is a skill published in the GitHub repository Tx1207/hello-scholar (5 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 3,076 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

obra/superpowers · 37 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens

agent-host-chat-contributions

Build and review cross-cutting agent-host chat behavior through lifecycle contributions. Use when adding turn lifecycle side effects, prompt or context injection, restored-history transformation, protocol-action observation, or when reviewing changes that add code to AgentSideEffects or AgentService.

microsoft/vscode · 56 tokens

auto-perf-optimize

Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.

microsoft/vscode · 62 tokens