Quality Engineering

When to use

Invoke after system-design (and any relevant backend/frontend/data architecture and published contracts) is approved, and before the first production-bound feature merges or a service is promoted through CI. Use this skill to decide what must be tested, at which layer, with which production-like dependencies, and which gates block merge and release. The trigger is an approaching merge/release/promotion decision for a system whose architecture and contracts already exist.

Do not use for authoring isolated unit tests, debugging an individual failing test, framework-specific test syntax or runner configuration, load-test implementation, penetration testing, or exploratory QA execution. Those belong to downstream implementations/* test work.

Inputs

Required:

• Approved system-design.md and the architecture documents it spawned (backend/frontend/data, as present).
• Approved PRD with success metrics.
• Published service contract: openapi.yaml, event/webhook contracts, or equivalent.
• Persistence schema or migration plan, when the system has a data layer.

Optional: