heuristic-test-design-reference

Overview

The exploratory-testing literature converged on four canonical heuristic test-design models, each cited inline at point of use below. This skill is a pure reference - no execution steps; it is the catalog test-case-from-live-feature and exploratory-charter authoring consume to generate coverage when no documented input exists.

When to use

• A feature is being tested with no story, no AC, no documentation (the dominant real-world starting point for exploratory testing).
• A legacy / brownfield codebase has no test coverage and you are onboarding cold.
• A competitor or reverse-engineered product is under review (security audit, market intel).
• A spec exists but is so thin that heuristic supplementation is needed alongside it.
• A team's exploratory charter needs a structured prompt set instead of pure intuition.

Do not use this skill alone to produce a deliverable. It is the input to a downstream authoring skill (test-case-from-live-feature, manual-test-script-author). The catalog tells you what to look at; the downstream skill turns observations into a matrix or charter.

How to use

Run the four models in sequence; each one narrows the next. No written story or acceptance criteria are required - that is the whole point of the catalog.