Testing

Test the boundary you changed. Source tests establish behavior; packaging tests establish what ships; live provider acceptance is a separate, opt-in activity.

Choose the smallest useful proof

Keep behavior tests beside their owner under src/skills/, src/shared/, or src/plugins/. Root tests/ protects repository-wide contracts such as packaging, manifests, release tooling, and generated-output freshness. Tests normally import canonical source; execute generated entrypoints when the installed-artifact boundary is what you need to prove.

Focused and complete runs

The test wrapper forwards filters to Vitest and always uses run mode:

# One owner
pnpm run test:vitest src/skills/session-export-transcript

# Installed payload boundaries
pnpm run test:vitest tests/tooling/skill-packaging.test.ts

# Complete deterministic suite
pnpm test

The packaging suite already covers representative instruction-only, shared-runtime, standalone, and complete-plugin boundaries. Extend an existing proof surface rather than adding a skill-by-provider matrix, prose snapshots, or a test-count quota.

Generated output is part of verification

pnpm test includes the generated-output drift guard. After an intentional source change, rebuild before expecting the whole suite to pass:

pnpm run build
pnpm run type-check
pnpm run build:check
pnpm test
pnpm run validate
pnpm run smoke

When auditing an existing branch, run build:check before a repairing build so you retain evidence of the original drift. The smoke command is a mocked end-to-end Consensus flow; it does not call authenticated providers.

What passing tests do not prove

A green source test does not prove the packaged unit includes its resources. A green packaging test does not prove a fresh provider session discovers the skill. A green mocked smoke flow does not prove authentication, permissions, or native provider behavior.

Live tests require explicit authorization and can spend real quota. Do not use them as a default docs or packaging check. See CI & Quality Gates for workflow triggers and Releases & Versioning for the separate acceptance boundary.