test-driven-development

test-driven-development is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from wazimmerman/zimster. It costs 24 tokens per session (806 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A test-driven development guide. TDD means writing a test for one expected behavior, seeing it fail, then writing the code and improving it.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps build changes through verified RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycles, with focused tests or executable reproductions for each important behavior.
Why use it?
It prevents code from being written without proof of the behavior it should provide and helps distinguish real failures from broken test setup.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the zimster plugin — 12 skills, 1 command, 4 agents, 1 hook shipped together

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/wazimmerman/zimster/test-driven-development
Any agent
npx skills add wazimmerman/zimster --skill test-driven-development
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wazimmerman/zimster

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install zimster, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 12 skills, 1 command, 4 agents, 1 hook.

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 test-driven-development

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wazimmerman/zimster/test-driven-development.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/wazimmerman/zimster/test-driven-development)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/wazimmerman/zimster/test-driven-development"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wazimmerman/zimster/test-driven-development.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 806 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 $0.00024 $0.00806
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00403
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00161
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00081

Measured 3d ago against content hash c4c8b4ca3d0e, 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 3d 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.

plugins/zimster/skills/test-driven-development/SKILL.md · 117 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 117 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Test-Driven Development

Adapted from Superpowers' TDD discipline under the MIT License.

Iron law

NO PRODUCTION CODE WITHOUT A FAILING TEST FIRST

RED must fail for the expected reason: the behavioral defect, not a typo, broken fixture, missing dependency, or unrelated setup error.

RED for one behavior

Write the smallest test or executable reproduction for one observable behavior. State:

  • the production defect/change that this test detects;
  • expected failure signal;
  • why current behavior should fail.

Run it. A passing test proves no new behavior. A command that fails before test discovery proves only setup failure.

Multi-behavior features

For multiple behaviors, a “module not found” RED does not prove the individual behavior tests. It proves only that the module is absent; each load-bearing behavior still needs falsifiable evidence.

Use one or a combination of:

  1. incremental RED-GREEN cycles for each load-bearing behavior;
  2. a deliberately incomplete stub that permits each behavioral test to fail meaningfully before implementation;
  3. focused mutation checks that remove or invert each important invariant and demonstrate the corresponding test becomes RED.

Several behaviors may share one commit and one efficient test invocation, but the evidence must identify meaningful RED for each load-bearing behavior.

Prefer real behavior over mock-call choreography. Mock only unavoidable boundaries and assert externally meaningful outcomes.

GREEN

Write the least production code that makes the focused RED pass. Do not add speculative options or unrelated refactors. Run the focused proof, then the smallest affected repository-declared test group.

REFACTOR

Only after GREEN:

  • remove duplication;
  • improve names/boundaries;
  • simplify control flow;
  • extract a reusable unit when a second real use exists.

Keep focused and affected proofs green; refactoring adds no behavior.

Regression and falsifiability checks

For a bug fix, or for a high-value invariant in a multi-behavior feature:

Read the full file on GitHub · 117 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. 3d ago First seen · 117 lines · 24 tokens per session scan A c4c8b4ca3d0e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

test-driven-development is a skill published in the GitHub repository wazimmerman/zimster (2 stars, last pushed 16d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 806 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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