Testing Standards

Philosophy

Tests are verification infrastructure, not checkboxes. They protect against regressions, document expected behavior, and surface real issues for human evaluation.

Comprehensive, not exhaustive. Cover meaningful scenarios without combinatorial explosion.

Pre-Flight Checklist

Before writing any test, answer:

1. What is the contract? (inputs → outputs, side effects, errors)
2. What are the boundaries? (empty, nil, zero, max, negative)
3. What can go wrong? (every error return path)
4. What state does it depend on? (filesystem, env vars, time)
5. Is there concurrency? (goroutines, shared state)