assertion-free coverage probes;
self-comparisons and identity copiers;
copied fixtures, inventories, manifests, or export lists;
exact source, import, or string greps;
private predicate or call-shape tests duplicated at real boundaries;
duplicate invocations of the same contract;
provider-local replays of shared helpers;
tests whose only purpose is preserving test-only exports, globals, or wrappers;
dead production code whose only callers are tests;
expected values produced by the helper or renderer under test;
mocks that implement the asserted behavior, or one identical mock standing in for different APIs;
fixtures that supply the receipt, admission, or callback ordering the owner should produce, or persistence asserted against a store the path never writes;
capability tests that restate declared flags instead of exercising the delivery or acknowledgement the flag promises;
negative controls that pass for an unrelated reason, such as a denial from a different guard or a rejection the production path never reaches;
names or fixtures that promise more than the input exercises, such as a "retires the window" test asserting the window was not cleared.

Value bar

Tests justify their maintenance cost by protecting behavior, a credible regression, or an independently meaningful contract. In an audit, an existing test that must change for behavior-preserving source reorganization is suspect, not automatically deletable; the authoring gate still rejects new ones.

Before judging a candidate, read the complete test and production owner, its entry point, callers, callees, sibling implementations, overlapping tests, CI routing, and relevant history. Read root and scoped AGENTS.md files first. When the test claims dependency-backed behavior, inspect the dependency source or types directly.

Retention bar

Keep a test when it independently enforces a public API, plugin SDK, protocol, config, migration, storage, security, platform, default, prompt-byte, generated cross-language, package, release, or architecture contract. Also keep:

call ordering when order is observable behavior;
regressions with a credible failure mode;
source inspection when it is the cheapest independent guard: it fails when the contract changes (the user-facing key, byte, or path) and survives an identifier-only refactor;
a retained test that fails on the baseline: treat it as a possible product bug, reproduce it, and repair the owner rather than deleting it.

Static or slow is not a deletion reason. A test that resembles implementation may still be the independent contract; prove otherwise before removing it.

Candidate evidence

Record every field below before editing. A missing field means the candidate is not ready for deletion:

exact test name and location;
what failure it can actually detect;
non-test callers of the covered production or support seam;
stronger remaining owner-boundary proof, or why no proof is needed;
relevant history and the reason the test or seam exists;
production or test-support deletion unlocked;
risk and the focused validation command.

Edit shape

Choose one coherent owner-boundary batch. Delete obsolete test-only exports, globals, wrappers, and dead production paths instead of preserving aliases. Move retained regressions to their canonical owners. Consolidate repeated package or dependency assertions into one generic contract.

Prefer net-negative production LOC. Do not add replacement tests that restate the same implementation, and do not convert uncertain candidates into cleanup to increase deletion counts.

Handoff

Report:

removed low-value categories;
production simplifications;
retained false positives and why they remain valuable;
proof actually run.

Adapted from openclaw's test-audit skill (MIT, OpenClaw Foundation); see ../LICENSE-openclaw.

test-pruner

Test Pruner

Junk patterns