domains / families / software-engineering / test-anti-patterns

test-anti-patterns

separate

Audit a test file or suite; produce a severity-ranked diagnostic report. ALWAYS USE for tests that verify nothing, missing/tautological assertions, swallowed/broad exceptions, flaky/order-dependent tests, duplication, or magic values. Polyglot. DO NOT USE for direct edits: writing-mstest-tests owns supplied MSTest assertions/attributes/lifecycle; code-testing owns new tests. Exclude running tests, migration, assertion metrics (assertion-quality), raw .NET coverage collection (run-tests), non-.NET coverage collection/analysis (native tooling), project-wide .NET coverage/CRAP (coverage-analysis), named-target .NET CRAP (crap-score), behavioral/pseudo-mutation gaps (test-gap-analysis), test-mix/ happy-vs-error classification and trait distributions (test-tagging), or the testsmells.org catalog (test-smell-detection).

When to use

• User asks to review test quality or find test smells
• User wants to know why tests are flaky or unreliable
• User asks "are my tests good?" or "what's wrong with my tests?"
• User requests a test audit or test code review
• User wants diagnostic findings before deciding what to improve

When not to use

• User wants to write new tests from scratch (use `code-testing`)
• User wants direct implementation fixes rather than a diagnostic review (use the relevant write/edit skill)
• User asks to fix swapped `Assert.AreEqual` argument order in MSTest (use `writing-mstest-tests`)
• User asks to convert MSTest `DynamicData` from `IEnumerable<object[]>` to `ValueTuple` (use `writing-mstest-tests`)
• User wants to run or execute tests (use `run-tests` for .NET)
• User wants to migrate between test frameworks or versions (use migration skills)
• User wants raw .NET coverage collection (use `run-tests`), non-.NET coverage collection or analysis (use native tooling), project-wide .NET coverage/CRAP metrics (use `coverage-analysis`), or named-target .NET CRAP (use `crap-score`)
• User asks whether tests would catch a bug or wants behavioral/pseudo-mutation gaps (use `test-gap-analysis`)

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