Integration and contract testing patterns — API endpoint tests, component integration, database testing, Pact contract verification, property-based testing, and Zod schema validation. Use when testing API boundaries, verifying contracts, or validating cross-service integration.
Integration and contract testing patterns — API endpoint tests, component integration, database testing, Pact contract verification, property-based testing, and Zod schema validation. Use when testing API boundaries, verifying contracts, or validating cross-service integration.
Focused patterns for testing API boundaries, cross-service contracts, component integration, database layers, property-based verification, and schema validation.
Quick Reference
For complex emulate setups (full config generation, webhook HMAC, CI per-worker port isolation), delegate to the emulate-engineer subagent. Pairs with the emulate-seed skill.
Area
Rule / Reference
Impact
Stateful API testing (emulate)
rules/emulate-stateful-testing.md
HIGH
API endpoint tests
rules/integration-api.md
HIGH
React component integration
rules/integration-component.md
HIGH
Database layer testing
rules/integration-database.md
HIGH
Zod schema validation
rules/validation-zod-schema.md
HIGH
Pact contract testing
rules/verification-contract.md
MEDIUM
Stateful testing (Hypothesis)
rules/verification-stateful.md
MEDIUM
Evidence & property-based
rules/verification-techniques.md
MEDIUM
References
Topic
File
House rules not documented upstream
references/ork-delta.md
Consumer-side Pact tests
references/consumer-tests.md
Hypothesis strategies guide
references/strategies-guide.md
Checklists
Checklist
File
Contract testing readiness
checklists/contract-testing-checklist.md
Property-based testing
checklists/property-testing-checklist.md
Scripts & Templates
Script
File
Create integration test
scripts/create-integration-test.md
Examples
Example
File
Full testing strategy
examples/orchestkit-test-strategy.md
Upstream coverage (do not restate)
This skill wraps Pact, the Pact Broker, and FastAPI testing. It carries only the OrchestKit
delta. Fetch the vendor docs for the topics below instead of restating them here.
Topic
First-party source
Pact Broker publish CLI, pact versioning and tagging flags
Tracker-owned; no single vendor page covers all four. Defect lifecycle: https://docs.github.com/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/about-issues . Schedule, roles and sign-off are org process, not a documented product feature. House quality budgets from the retired template survive in references/ork-delta.md
The house subset of those topics stays in this skill and is not routed away:
rules/verification-contract.md keeps the two broker commands ork gates on plus the selector
defaults; checklists/contract-testing-checklist.md keeps the CI/CD, isolation and security
checkboxes; references/consumer-tests.md keeps the business-language provider-state naming
convention and the matcher table. The rules that have no upstream home at all live in
references/ork-delta.md.
Stateful API Testing (emulate — FIRST CHOICE)
For GitHub, Vercel, and Google API integration tests, emulate is the first choice. It provides full state machines that model real API behavior — not static mocks.
Tool
Best For
emulate
Stateful API tests (GitHub/Vercel/Google) — FIRST CHOICE
Pact
Cross-team contract verification
MSW
Frontend HTTP mocking (simple request/response)
Nock
Node.js unit-level HTTP interception
See rules/emulate-stateful-testing.md for the full decision matrix, seed-start-test-assert pattern, and incorrect/correct examples.
Testcontainers (real dependencies in CI)
When contract tests and emulate aren't enough — e.g. testing against real Postgres, Redis, Kafka, or an S3-compatible store — Testcontainers spins up ephemeral Docker containers per test and tears them down afterward. path_patterns above already matches **/testcontainers/**; use these patterns there.
Target: testcontainers >= 11.0.0 (Node) — v11 (Q1 2026) added named-network auto-cleanup, reusable containers via .withReuse(), and first-class Podman support.
