| name | request-test-file-grader |
| description | Grade every `it` block in a Canvas request spec file by fanning out parallel `request-test-grader` subagents. Writes per-spec reports to `tmp/grade-reports/`; emits only the summary table in chat. Does not edit project files. |
| when_to_use | Invoke when the user asks to "grade the whole file", "grade all the specs in this file", "audit this request spec", or wants per-`it` grades for an entire request spec file. For grading a single `it`, use `request-test-grader` instead. |
| argument-hint | [path-to-spec-file] |
| model | sonnet |
| effort | medium |
| disable-model-invocation | false |
| user-invocable | true |
| allowed-tools | Read Grep Agent Bash Write AskUserQuestion |
Purpose
Grade every it block in a Canvas request spec file. The skill does discovery and aggregation in the main session; the grading itself happens in isolated request-test-grader subagents, one per it, spawned in parallel waves. The grader agent is the authority for per-it verdicts — this skill never grades anything itself.
For grading a single it, use the request-test-grader skill instead. This skill is the file-level orchestrator.
Workflow
Run the steps in order. Do not narrate transitions — emit only the outputs the steps specify.
The full argument string is available as $ARGUMENTS. Parse it into:
- path — the first non-flag token. If absent, use
AskUserQuestion to ask the user to enter a relative file path to the spec file they want to grade.
Reject any flags or extra tokens with a single-line error and stop:
Unexpected argument: <token>. Usage: /request-test-file-grader <path-to-spec-file>.
Then proceed.
1. Verify the target
The grader applies only to request tests. Run two checks in order; the first failure stops the skill with the indicated message and no further work.
1a. File exists. Confirm path is a readable file. If it doesn't exist, stop and print:
File not found: <path>
1b. Request-test category. Confirm one of these:
- The path is under
spec/requests/, spec/integration/, or spec/apis/, or
- The file declares
type: :request (use Grep to check for type: :request in the file).
If neither holds, stop and print exactly one line:
The request-test grader applies only to request tests. <path> is not under spec/requests/, spec/integration/, or spec/apis/, and does not declare `type: :request`.
Do not invoke any agents.
2. Discover it blocks
Grep the file with output mode content and -n to capture line numbers. Match the pattern ^\s*(it|specify|example)\s+['"] (lines that start an it block with a description string).
For each match, capture:
- line: the line number from grep
- description: the quoted string after
it/specify/example (substring after the first " or ', up to the matching closing quote). Truncation is fine if the description spans multiple lines — record what's on the matched line.
Inline it { ... } (no description). If the line matches ^\s*it\s+do or ^\s*it\s*\{, treat it as a candidate but record its description as (no description). The grader can still handle it.
If discovery yields zero candidates, stop and print:
No `it` blocks found in <path>. Nothing to grade.
3. Confirm the run
Always prompt before spawning any graders. The user should see the expected cost and wall time before committing — small files are cheap, but a misclick on a 400-it file is not, and the prompt is consistent regardless of size.
Compute estimates from the empirically-measured per-grader cost (~$0.13, ~60 s wall time on Sonnet 4.x):
- Estimated cost (USD) =
N × 0.13, rounded to one decimal.
- Estimated wall time =
ceil(N / 10) minutes (each wave runs up to 10 graders in parallel, each grader ~60 s).
These are rough — actual cost varies with controller size and it complexity; treat them as order-of-magnitude and quote them as "≈" values.
Use AskUserQuestion with the question:
This file has <N> `it` blocks. Estimated cost ≈ $<cost>, wall time ≈ <minutes> min. Proceed?
Two options:
- Proceed — continue to step 4 (Announce the run).
- Cancel — exit cleanly with a single line:
Cancelled. No graders spawned. Do not create the output directory; do not call any agents.
4. Announce the run
Print one line so the user sees what's about to happen:
5. Fan out in waves
Process candidates in waves of 10, in source order (lowest line first). For each wave, emit a single assistant message containing one Agent tool call per candidate in the wave — they run in parallel. Wait for the wave to complete before starting the next.
Why 10. Wave size only affects wall time — token cost per grader is fixed regardless of batching. The cap is a chosen default, not a derived ceiling. Two real considerations push toward a small number rather than fanning out unbounded:
- Org-level rate limits. All subagents share the org's Anthropic API rate limits (ITPM in particular — Sonnet 4.x ITPM ranges from 30 K at Tier 1 to 2 M at Tier 4). A single grader uses on the order of 20 K input tokens; a wave that's too wide can saturate the ITPM budget for ~60 s and 429 itself or any parallel session on the same org.
- Empirically untested wider fan-outs. Claude Code doesn't publish a per-message parallelism cap; very-wide tool fan-outs in a single assistant message are not a well-trodden path, so 10 stays inside the range that's been exercised in practice.
Raise deliberately if you know your org tier can absorb it and you've watched a real run not 429.
For each Agent call:
- subagent_type:
request-test-grader
- description:
Grade <basename>:<line>
- prompt: the bare
<path>:<line>, e.g. spec/requests/courses_api_spec.rb:42. No prefix, no extra prose — the agent's input contract is a single path:line string.
Do not pass any other context. Each agent loads the rules file and resolves the controller on its own.
6. Parse each agent's result
Each agent invocation produces one of four outcomes. Classify each before writing files (step 7) and before the summary (step 8). The classification keys off whether the result contains a <report> block — diagnostic length is not part of the test, so a multi-line caller-misuse message is still ungraded, not malformed.
- Graded. Result contains a
<report>...</report> block whose body ends with a === machine-readable === ... === end === trailer carrying all four fields (result, failures, passing, na). The normal case.
- Ungraded. Result has no
<report> block at all — the grader stopped before emitting one (caller-misuse diagnostic, agent refusal, empty output, etc.). Capture the raw text verbatim.
- Malformed. Result has a
<report> block but the trailer is missing, truncated, or its fields don't match the parser contract (missing field, unexpected field, result value outside {pass, fail}, slugs not kebab-case, or the same slug appearing in more than one of failures / passing / na). Capture the raw text verbatim. Do not retry.
- Agent error. The
Agent tool itself failed (timeout, refusal, tool error — no usable result body). Capture whatever error string is available.
For each Graded result, extract the trailer fields:
result → pass or failfailures → comma-separated kebab-case slugs of rules with fail verdict. May be empty (failures=); an empty value coincides with result=pass.passing → comma-separated kebab-case slugs of rules with pass verdict. May be empty (passing=).na → comma-separated kebab-case slugs of rules whose trigger condition was absent. May be empty (na=).
Do not retry any outcome — surface failures honestly. A retry policy is a separate decision; this skill is single-pass.
7. Write per-spec reports to disk
Full <report> blocks are not printed to chat — nobody reads 20 inline reports, and the directory is a more useful artifact (persistent, shareable, scriptable against later). Write each report to a file instead and emit only the summary in chat (step 8). Writing-to-disk doesn't save output tokens versus printing-to-chat — the model emits the report content either way — but it dominates on UX.
7a. Create the output directory (once, before the first wave)
Compute the basename of the spec file without extension (e.g. spec/requests/courses_api_spec.rb → courses_api_spec). Before launching the first wave, issue one Bash call that builds the dir name with a timestamp, creates it, and prints the resulting path on stdout:
DIR="tmp/grade-reports/<basename>-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)" && mkdir -p "$DIR" && echo "$DIR"
Capture stdout as <outdir> and use it verbatim for every Write below.
7b. Write one file per candidate (after each wave)
After each wave completes, write <outdir>/L<line>.md for every candidate in that wave. File contents depend on the outcome from step 6:
- Graded — write the agent's full
<report>...</report> block verbatim. Tags, markdown body, and === machine-readable === trailer all preserved.
- Ungraded — write the raw agent output verbatim with a leading line
UNGRADED — agent returned no <report> block: so the consumer can tell at a glance the grader stopped before producing a verdict.
- Malformed — write the raw agent output verbatim with a leading line
MALFORMED — <report> block present but trailer missing or invalid: so the consumer knows the grading attempt produced output that didn't match the parser contract.
- Agent error — write the captured error string verbatim with a leading line
AGENT ERROR — Agent tool call did not return a usable result: so the consumer can distinguish tool failures from grader output.
Do not edit, reformat, or summarize report bodies. Downstream parsers depend on the trailer contract.
7c. Write the running summary file (after each wave)
After each wave's per-candidate files are written, also (re-)write <outdir>/summary.md with the summary computed from the results gathered so far (same shape as step 8, but only covering candidates that have completed). The file is overwritten on each wave so it always reflects the current state. This way a Ctrl-C mid-run still leaves the user with a usable summary of what did grade, alongside the per-spec files for the completed candidates.
8. Emit the chat summary
Emit exactly three sections in this order. Do not include any <report> blocks here.
8a. Summary table
GitHub-flavored markdown. One row per candidate, in source order. Columns:
| Column | Contents |
|---|
# | 1-based row index |
Line | the it line number |
Description | the captured description string, truncated to ~60 chars with … if longer |
Result | the trailer's result uppercased (PASS or FAIL), or — for ungraded/malformed/error |
# Fails | count of slugs in the trailer's failures field (0 on a passing test), or — for ungraded/malformed/error |
Failing rules | up to 3 slugs from the trailer's failures field, comma-separated (e.g. literal-path, reload-assertions, no-magic-values); if more than 3, append +N for the remainder (e.g. literal-path, reload-assertions, no-magic-values +2); — if failures is empty or the outcome is ungraded/malformed/error |
Status | blank when graded; ungraded, malformed, or error otherwise |
The grader emits failures in source-line order (per its Failures sort rule), so the first 3 slugs are the earliest violations in the it body. No re-sort, no rules-file lookup.
8b. Aggregate counts
A short bullet list:
Graded: <G>/<N> (where G is graded, N is total candidates)Results: <P> pass, <F> fail (across graded reports; omit either side if zero)Total failures: <X> (sum of slug counts in failures= across all graded reports — the number of rule violations to fix)Top failing rules: <slug> ×<n>, <slug> ×<n>, … (rules ranked by how many graded its failed them; cap the line at the top 5 rules; omit the line entirely if Total failures is zero)Non-graded: <U> ungraded, <M> malformed, <E> agent errors (omit categories with zero count; omit the whole line if all three are zero)
8c. Report directory pointer
A short footer telling the user where the per-spec reports landed. Exact shape:
Full per-spec reports: `<outdir>/`
summary.md — this summary
L<line>.md × <N> — one file per spec, full <report> block (or diagnostic / error) inside
Do not list every individual file path — the L<line>.md × <N> form is enough; the user can ls the directory.
Boundaries
- Whole-file scope, no sampling knob. This skill grades every
it in one file. There is no per-run cap — to grade a subset, invoke request-test-grader on specific path:line targets directly. A partial cap was considered and dropped: the natural follow-up to "grade the first N" is "now grade the next N," which would force the user to re-run the already-graded N to pick up the remainder — useless ceremony for no real value.
- Does not edit project files. The only filesystem writes go to
tmp/grade-reports/<basename>-<timestamp>/. Source files, specs, and controllers are read-only.
- No controller pre-resolution. Each grader resolves its own route and controller independently. This wastes some tokens (each agent re-reads the rules file and re-resolves the controller) but keeps the grader agent autonomous and the orchestrator simple. Pre-resolution is a possible later optimization, not part of v1.
- Full reports never go to chat. They go to disk only. The summary table plus the report-directory pointer is the chat contract. This is a UX decision, not a cost optimization — the model emits the report content either way (
Write tool inputs are output tokens too), but a directory of files is a more useful artifact than 20 inline reports a human won't read.
- Single-pass, no retry. Each candidate gets exactly one
Agent call. Tool failures, malformed output, and caller-misuse diagnostics all surface in the summary as-is. Retry policy is a separate concern; this skill is the orchestrator, not a recovery layer.
Example invocations
/request-test-file-grader spec/requests/courses_api_spec.rb
/request-test-file-grader spec/apis/v1/courses_api_spec.rb
