Enforce evidence bar, coverage gates, and regression guards. Use when adding tests or claiming done. Do not use to run suites; use night-market-operations.
Enforce evidence bar, coverage gates, and regression guards. Use when adding tests or claiming done. Do not use to run suites; use night-market-operations.
Validation and QA: what counts as evidence here
This skill defines the evidence bar for claiming work complete, the
coverage and quality thresholds that gate merges, the golden regression
tests that guard settled battles, and the procedure for adding tests.
The one-line thesis: a green check proves spec-satisfaction, not
correctness, so every completion claim needs cited evidence and every
test needs proof it can fail.
The evidence bar
Never claim "should work". Run the thing, capture the output, cite it.
The house discipline comes from Skill(imbue:proof-of-work):
Number every piece of evidence: [E1], [E2], each with the exact
command and its captured output.
Map each acceptance criterion to evidence with a verdict:
Criterion: [E2] -> PASS or -> FAIL.
Give the overall claim one of three statuses: COMPLETE (all
criteria passed), PARTIAL (list blockers), BLOCKED (explain
why). A blocked task reported as blocked with evidence is a
successful report. A guessed "done" is not.
The final response must not contain "should work", "looks right",
or any other unverified confidence phrase.
Verifier integrity: never let the generator judge itself
A passing verifier can mislead two ways (from the prover-verifier
research, codified in commit 29081fda, module
plugins/imbue/skills/proof-of-work/modules/verifier-integrity.md):
Failure mode
What it looks like
Wrong spec
The check confirms the code matches the spec, not that the spec matches intent
Hollow check
assert True, a mock returning the expected value, a stubbed service: all green, all worthless
Rules that follow:
The agent that wrote the code must not be the sole judge of whether
the code works. Use an independent check: a fresh subagent, the real
test suite, a human, or an end-to-end run the generator cannot
influence.
Validate the spec separately from the code. A machine-checked pass
against a wrong spec is confident, green, and wrong.
When reviewing a test, ask what change to the code would make it
fail. If nothing would, it is not a test.
Iron Law TDD (Constitution rule 3)
CONSTITUTION.md rule 3: no implementation without a failing test
first. Scope:
Applies to every code change in plugin Python sources
(plugins/*/src/, plugins/*/scripts/, plugins/*/hooks/).
Skill files, agent files, and prose docs are exempt. Their analogue
is a structural validation test: every new skill needs a
test_skill_<name>.py proving the structure.
A structural validation test asserts observable content in the skill
file: required sections exist, the referenced modules exist on disk,
tables and examples the skill promises are present. Model on
plugins/imbue/tests/unit/skills/test_proof_of_work.py, which checks
SKILL.md sections, module files, and enforcement tables. The test must
fail if someone deletes the section it guards (see the
tautological-test trap below).
Thresholds
Gate
Value
Where defined
Enforced by
Root coverage
fail_under = 85
root pyproject.toml[tool.coverage.report]
root pytest runs
Per-plugin coverage
coverage_threshold in [tool.nightmarket], 90 for most plugins, 85 for gauntlet
plugins/<p>/pyproject.toml
scripts/run-plugin-tests.sh passes --cov-fail-under only when the key is set and > 0
Mutation testing
weekly Sunday 00:00 UTC cron mutates only sanctum (the matrix falls back to sanctum when the dispatch input is empty); abstract/imbue/attune run only via manual dispatch with plugin=all or a named plugin
The run-plugin-tests.sh awk parser reads coverage_threshold from
[tool.nightmarket], never from addopts. Use
scripts/fix_coverage_threshold.py to migrate a plugin still using
the old location.
The script itself sets no minimum floor for coverage_threshold. If
the key is absent, no --cov-fail-under flag is passed at all, so a
plugin without the key has no coverage gate in the runner.
imbue's own addopts force --cov=scripts plus term and HTML
coverage reports on every run, including single-file runs.
The tautological-test trap
PR review here repeatedly catches tests that assert nothing. Evidence
in history: a94240e2 (12 tests of constants tightened to behavioral
coverage), f1cbbcf1 (strengthened tautological assertions),
30e58586 (validation-floor regression test), 42f7ce84 (round-trip
test replacing a structure-only check). The pattern: a test that
restates the code, mocks the unit under test, or asserts a constant
equals itself.
The counter-discipline is the revert test, executed by
sanctum:validate-pr:
Take the fix the PR claims to make.
Edit the fixed line back to its broken state (working tree must be
clean first, or the step is skipped as unsafe).
Run the test that supposedly guards the fix.
The test must FAIL against the reverted code. If it stays green,
the test is a dead assertion, not a guard.
Restore the fix.
When writing a new test, apply the same standard preemptively: write
the test so it would catch the bug's return, then confirm it fails
before the fix lands (that is the Iron Law's RED step).
Golden inventory: regression guards worth knowing
These tests lock in lessons from settled incidents. Do not weaken or
delete them without understanding the incident they guard.
Guard
Location
What it locks
py39 datetime alias
plugins/leyline/tests/test_python39_compat.py
AST-scans leyline source for datetime.UTC (a 3.11+ alias). Hooks run under system Python 3.9, and this alias broke the whole hook import chain three-plus times. Ruff UP017 kept auto-reverting manual fixes, so only this AST invariant test holds the line.
Lazy-import blocker
plugins/gauntlet/tests/unit/test_challenges.py
Installs a sys.meta_path blocker that raises on any re-import of anthropic, proving gauntlet's heavy deps stay lazily imported. Eager imports made every git commit emit hook ModuleNotFoundError.
Asserts LLM_TIMEOUT_SECONDS is strictly less than the Stop-hook timeout registered in hooks.json. A timeout above the budget once cost the hook its verdict entirely (full record: night-market-failure-archaeology SB7).
Hook stdin contract
plugins/abstract/tests/hooks/test_hook_io.py
Locks the input contract of shared/hook_io.py: stdin JSON is primary, legacy CLAUDE_TOOL_* env vars are fallback only. Env-reading hooks were once silent no-ops for months (full record: night-market-failure-archaeology SB9).
When you fix an incident of a similar class, add its guard here in the
same spirit: an invariant test that fails loudly if the lesson is
unlearned.
How to add tests
Layout and isolation
Each plugin owns plugins/<plugin>/tests/ with unit/,
integration/ subdirectories and its own conftest.py and pytest
config in the plugin's pyproject.toml.
Root pyproject.toml sets norecursedirs = ["plugins/*", ...].
Plugin tests MUST run per-plugin. Running them from the repo root
causes ImportPathMismatchError from duplicate module names (the root
conftest.py documents this).
Commands
# Single test file (fastest loop)cd plugins/imbue
uv run pytest tests/unit/test_deferred_capture.py -x -q
# Full suite for one plugincd plugins/<plugin>
uv run python -m pytest tests/ --tb=short -q
# or, where the plugin has a Makefile target:
make -C plugins/<plugin> test# Everything (what `make test` at root does)
./scripts/run-plugin-tests.sh --all
# Only plugins with staged changes
./scripts/run-plugin-tests.sh --changed
# Mutation testing for one plugin, locallycd plugins/<plugin>
uv run mutmut run --paths-to-mutate=scripts/,src/ --tests-dir=tests/
Markers
Root pytest runs with --strict-markers, so only registered markers
are legal. Registered in root pyproject.toml: unit, integration,
e2e, slow, network, plugin, skill, hook, command, bdd,
benchmark (skip benchmarks in CI with -m "not benchmark").
Checklist for new code
Failing test written and observed RED before implementation
(Iron Law).
Test would fail if the fix were reverted (revert-test standard).
Correct marker applied and test placed in unit/ or
integration/ accordingly.
Plugin suite passes locally with its coverage flag:
uv run python -m pytest tests/ --cov-fail-under=<threshold>.
New skill files have a test_skill_<name>.py structural test.
Failure-mode detection: silent failure in scanners
The most recurrent bug class in this repo is the swallowed error. In
scanner-shaped code (anything that walks files and reports findings),
the signature is except-continue: a try/except that skips a file on
malformed input and reports success on the remainder. The scanner
looks healthy while ignoring exactly the inputs most likely to be
broken.
The house convention since commit 666171c3 (issue #575): a scanner
that cannot process an input emits an ADVISORY finding for it instead
of skipping silently. Examples from that commit:
check_hook_modernization.py emits findings on malformed
hooks.json, SyntaxError, or OSError instead of dropping the file.
pensive harden/scanner.py appends an ADVISORY finding for
unreadable files under --strict.
minister dora_metrics warns and sets a partial flag on malformed
tag lines instead of silently classifying the repo Elite.
When reviewing or writing scanner code, grep for the pattern:
Any hit that discards an error without emitting a finding or an inline
"why it is safe to discard" comment violates Constitution rule 10
(errors are not optional).
When NOT to use
Running the suites, lint, release, or publish mechanics: use
night-market-operations (command anatomy lives there).
Classifying and gating a change, PR review flow, non-negotiables:
use night-market-change-control.
A test is failing and you need triage for a known repo failure mode:
use night-market-debugging-playbook.
History of why a guard exists (incident narratives, reverts): use
night-market-failure-archaeology.
Setting up pytest config or fixtures for a new plugin:
Skill(leyline:pytest-config) has the templates, and
Skill(leyline:testing-quality-standards) the anti-pattern catalog.
Exit Criteria
Any completion claim made under this skill cites numbered
evidence ([E1]...) with commands and captured output, and carries
a COMPLETE, PARTIAL, or BLOCKED status.
Every new test added in the session fails when its guarded fix
is reverted (demonstrated, not assumed).
New plugin Python code landed with a test observed failing
first, and the plugin suite passes at or above its
[tool.nightmarket] coverage_threshold.
Any new skill file has a passing test_skill_<name>.py
structural test.
No scanner code added or reviewed in the session contains an
except-continue that drops input without an ADVISORY finding or a
stated reason.
Provenance and maintenance
Compiled 2026-07-02 against repo v1.9.15, branch
discussions-fix-1.9.14. Volatile facts and how to re-verify them:
Root coverage floor: rg -n "fail_under" pyproject.toml
(85 as of 2026-07-02).
Per-plugin thresholds:
rg -n "coverage_threshold" plugins/*/pyproject.toml
(90 everywhere except gauntlet at 85, as of 2026-07-02).
Threshold parser behavior: read the awk block in
scripts/run-plugin-tests.sh (search tool.nightmarket).
Mutation cadence and plugin list:
rg -n "cron|matrix" .github/workflows/mutation-testing.yml.
Golden guards still present:
ls plugins/leyline/tests/test_python39_compat.py plugins/gauntlet/tests/unit/test_challenges.py plugins/herald/tests/unit/test_double_shot_latte.py plugins/abstract/tests/hooks/test_hook_io.py.
