JB Test Audit

Matt Pocock’s durable minimum rule: “Tautological tests considered harmful.”

Apply one value gate in every mode: each test must protect observable behavior, a credible regression, or an independently meaningful contract. Favor outside-in proof at the owner boundary. Optimize for confidence, not test count or deletion count.

Choose a Mode

• Authoring: gate every proposed or changed test before writing it.
• Audit: inspect a focused test surface read-only, report candidates, then edit only authorized outcomes.
• Campaign: when asked to audit a whole subsystem, inventory its complete test surface, split it into coherent owner-boundary batches, and run the audit procedure on one batch at a time.

State the selected mode and bounded scope. Completion means the mode and ownership boundary are explicit.

Inspect Before Judging

Read repository instructions, the complete tests, their production owners, entry points, callers, callees, sibling implementations, overlapping tests, CI routing, and relevant test commands. Inspect dependency source or types when a claim depends on them. Use history when it can explain the contract or seam.

Keep discovery read-only and report evidence before editing. Completion means each candidate is understood in its real call and coverage context.