Test audit

Protect confidence while reducing maintenance cost. Judge tests by the failures they detect, not by their count, size, speed, or coverage percentage.

For ordinary test authoring or review, use the gate, suspect patterns, retention bar, and focused validation below. Audit mode adds references/audit.md for a focused sweep or cleanup. Campaign mode also adds references/campaign.md when the user asks to audit a whole subsystem. Read only the references for the current mode. Ordinary test work does not authorize a repository-wide sweep or cleanup. Follow root and scoped AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md and the repository testing guide.

Authoring gate

Before adding or changing a test, answer these questions. Keep the answers brief; put them in the handoff only when they explain a disputed decision.