mutation-red-team

name	mutation-red-team
description	Launch an adversarial mutation-testing agent (Opus) that injects targeted regressions into goldseam's production code, runs the suites, and reports which mutations SURVIVED — surviving mutations are direct evidence of test-coverage gaps. Use when the user says "trickster", "mutation test", "break the code", "grade the tests", or after adding production code whose coverage is unproven.

Mutation red-team (the trickster)

Launches an Opus general-purpose agent that does what a mischievous reviewer would do if told "try to break this without the tests catching it": pick a load-bearing invariant, silently mutate it, run npm run build:packages && npm run test:unit && npm run test:system && npm run test:hardening && npm run test:heal, and report the verdict.

Surviving mutations are the finding. A SURVIVED mutation means the suite cannot distinguish broken code from working code — a concrete gap pointing at an invariant no test enforces. Complementary to test-red-team (reads tests statically) and red-team-review (reads prod statically); this is the dynamic, empirical check.

This skill is also the seed of goldseam's own Phase-2 mutation-guard ladder rung (re-break a healed target; the healed test must FAIL) — see .agents/reference/verification-ladder.md. Lessons learned here feed that stage's design.

When to invoke

• User says: "trickster", "mutation test", "break the code", "grade the tests", "can my tests catch regressions"
• After a red-team-review finds a prod bug — confirm the regression test you added actually catches recurrence
• After a milestone that added production code
• Proactively on anything listed under AGENTS.md "Hard rules" / "Load-bearing invariants"

How to invoke

Use the Agent tool with:

• subagent_type: "general-purpose"
• model: "opus"
• isolation: "worktree" — mandatory as the outer guard; the agent edits production code.
• Copies beat worktrees for the mutation work itself (learned the hard way: parallel agents resumed after transient errors were re-pointed at a shared worktree and corrupted each other's verdicts). The prompt template instructs the agent to snapshot the repo into its own fresh temp dir and work there. A worktree alone is fine for a single, non-resumed agent.
• description: 3–5 words (e.g. "Mutation red-team validator")
• prompt: template below. ONE mutation per agent; for N mutations, issue N parallel Agent calls in a single message.
• Suites bind port 4173 — mutation agents run them sequentially per agent, and each suite manages its own server, but parallel agents on one machine WILL collide on the port. Either run agents sequentially, or have each agent export a distinct port via the demo script and baseUrl (currently hardcoded — treat port collisions as verdict contamination and re-verify).

Curated mutations (this project)

Do NOT let the agent pick random lines — signal-to-noise on random mutants is terrible. Hand-pick from AGENTS.md invariants. Starter set, each tied to a named invariant:

1. Never-mask — in packages/goldseam/src/support/index.ts, remove the throw err in the finally (or make shouldRethrow return false). Must be CAUGHT by the capture-rule unit tests; the system suite's broken-selector run must also fail (test goes green).
2. Transparency — make shouldRethrow return true unconditionally. Must be CAUGHT by the hardening user-swallow check.
3. Retry-awareness — drop the attempt < Math.max(allowed, 0) gate in afterEach. Must be CAUGHT by hardening retry-flaky (stale artifact appears).
4. Redaction — make maskText the identity function in support/redact.ts. Must be CAUGHT by redact unit tests AND the support-invariants healthy-capture test ([redacted-email] assertion).
5. Assertion guard — remove the ASSERTION_CORE check in heal/validate.ts. Must be CAUGHT by heal-validate unit tests.
6. Ambiguity guard — accept occurrences > 1 in validateEdit. Must be CAUGHT by the ambiguous-oldString unit test.
7. Revert-on-failure — in heal/engine.ts, skip ctx.revert() on the failed path. Must be CAUGHT by the attempt-cap unit test (asserts spec reverted).
8. Confidence floor — drop the minConfidence give-up in heal/stages.ts. Must be CAUGHT by the low-confidence unit test.
9. Schema version — stop writing schemaVersion in plugin/artifacts.ts. Must be CAUGHT by writer unit test + system schema check.
10. Ladder teeth — make rerun in heal/stages.ts return pass without running Cypress. Must be CAUGHT by the wrong-edit scenario in (a plausible-but-wrong stub edit must end , not ).

Prompt template

Fill the bracketed sections. Send ONE mutation per agent invocation.

You are a trickster. Your job is to introduce a specific regression into
production code, run the test suites, and report whether the tests
caught you. You are operating in an isolated git worktree — but do NOT
work there directly.

## Rules

- FIRST: snapshot the repo into your own fresh temp directory
  (`rsync -a --exclude node_modules --exclude .git <repo>/ <tmpdir>/`)
  and do ALL work in that copy. Then `npm install` inside the copy.
- Apply EXACTLY the mutation specified below. Do not invent others.
- Do not touch any test file, script under scripts/, or spec under
  cypress/. Mutate only the file named below.
- Ensure no other process holds port 4173 before running suites
  (`lsof -ti:4173`); if it is held by someone else's run, wait or
  report contamination rather than guessing.
- After applying the mutation, run in the copy:
    npm run build:packages && npm run test:unit && npm run test:system \
      && npm run test:hardening && npm run test:heal
  Capture stdout+stderr. Note which step failed first (if any).
- Revert the mutation before exiting so the worktree auto-cleans.

## Mutation

File: [ABSOLUTE PATH IN THE COPY]
Change: [EXACT BEFORE → AFTER]
Reasoning-for-humans: [one sentence — which AGENTS.md invariant this probes]

## Verdict

Report exactly:
- CAUGHT if any step failed after the mutation
- SURVIVED if all passed

Include the reported test COUNTS for each step (the unit step must show
both workspaces: aria-snapshot and goldseam). A verdict without counts
is not trustworthy.

For CAUGHT: name the failing test(s); one to three sentences — is the
failure specific to the invariant, or incidental (build error)?
For SURVIVED: state what the code now does incorrectly and what kind of
test would have caught it. No fix — diagnosis only.

## Output format

~150–300 words. Lead with the one-word verdict. Before exiting,
`git status` in the worktree must be clean. Verify and report.

Verdict hygiene (learned 2026-07-04)

A SURVIVED verdict is only as good as proof that the relevant tests actually executed. One agent's copy silently skipped an entire workspace's unit suite and reported a false SURVIVED that the skipped tests demonstrably catch. Require in every verdict: the per-step test counts (unit must report BOTH workspaces — aria-snapshot AND goldseam), and re-verify any SURVIVED locally (apply the mutation in the main tree, run the narrowest relevant suite, revert) before treating it as a gap. Vacuous pins are the dual hazard: a test that early-returns on an environment limitation passes green while asserting nothing — mutation testing is exactly what exposes those; when found, replace the guard with a stub that forces the code path to execute.

Reading the results

• Mutation score = CAUGHT / total. Under 80% is a weak suite; under 50% is dangerous.
• Surviving mutations by invariant = the prioritized list of missing tests. Every SURVIVED maps to one regression test to add (or one ledger entry in .agents/reference/invariants-and-tradeoffs.md if legitimately unobservable).
• Compare to prior runs — a mutation CAUGHT last cycle that now SURVIVES means a recent change weakened coverage.
• A build-error CAUGHT (type error, not a test) is weak evidence — note it; the invariant may still lack a behavioral test.

Cleanup discipline

Stricter than the other red-team skills because this agent writes code.

• Clean revert → worktree auto-deletes. If changes are left, inspect once, then git worktree remove <path>.
• Mutation output belongs inline in the conversation, not in a repo file. Condense SURVIVED findings before reporting.
• Before returning control: git status clean on the main tree, git worktree list shows no strays, and nothing is listening on 4173.