authoring-test-plan — SKILL.md

Variant: standard · When to use: authoring the QA / verification plan for a project — to a bar where a tester executes it with no further questions, every behavior has at least one traceable case, and the catalog is risk-weighted, not combinatorial.

Overview

This skill is the how-to of writing a strong test plan (QA / verification plan) — the document that says what to test, at what level, in what environment, to what done-criteria, and the concrete cases to run. It spans both the strategy (scope, test levels & types, coverage approach, environments, entry/exit criteria, risk-based prioritization) and an enumerated test-case catalog (each case: id, preconditions, steps, expected result, traceability). This skill carries the producer's judgment — the research method and the quality bar — not the section list. It assumes two collaborators: a test-plan template tool that supplies the section structure, and a deep-research capability to ground the plan in established test-strategy practice. The producer is handed the upstream documents (typically the feature-spec whose behaviors the cases verify, the api-spec whose operations + errors they exercise, and the PRD whose acceptance the exit criteria tie to) — never a blank page. The bar to clear: a tester can execute the plan with no further questions — every supported behavior has at least one traceable test case, the levels and environments are stated, the exit criteria are testable, and the catalog is sized to the project by risk, not padded and not thin.

When to activate

• Authoring a test plan / QA verification plan from an approved feature-spec (+ api-spec / PRD) that names the behaviors the system must satisfy.
• Specifying the test levels & types, coverage approach, environments, entry/exit criteria, risk prioritization, and the test-case catalog for a project.
• Filling a test-plan template with researched, traceable, risk-weighted per-behavior coverage and executable cases.

Do NOT activate when: