Measures an existing test suite's current state on four axes: per-file tier classification (unit / integration / E2E, first match wins), pyramid ratio against whatever target the team already committed to, per-layer flake rate, and defects-caught-per-run-minute ROI per tier, then reduces them to one categorical verdict (Healthy, Needs pruning, Needs refactor, Cannot assess). Reports severity against a target ratio but never prescribes one: choosing the target unit:integration:E2E mix and the rebalancing plan belongs to a pyramid-balancing capability such as `test-pyramid-balancer`. Use when a suite has grown for a year or more without review and someone needs a defensible read on whether it is healthy, over-grown, or structurally inverted before deciding what to delete or rewrite.

Pure-reference catalog of test-case anatomy and review quality - what fields a well-formed test case must have, what each field means, and how to score the content once the fields are filled. Enumerates the ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119-3:2021 test-case template fields (identifier, objective, preconditions, inputs, steps, expected results, postconditions, environment, traceability) and the ISTQB CTAL-TM specification-technique-driven additions (equivalence partition, boundary value, decision table, state transition), maps the canonical anatomy to five tracker-specific schemas (TestRail, Xray, Zephyr Scale, Allure TestOps, Qase), and carries the review rubric: six per-case quality axes plus six set-level axes with PASS / WEAK / FAIL verdicts derived without averaging, each threshold marked standard-backed or practitioner convention. Use as the authoritative source when authoring a case template, reviewing a batch of test cases for quality, or migrating between tools.

Build-an-X workflow that produces a QA team skill matrix - team members crossed with competency dimensions at explicit proficiency levels, each cell backed by observable evidence - then derives the full gap analysis: classify each gap (coverage / capability / bus-factor / surplus), rank the gaps against the team's roadmap, and recommend a closing move per gap (train / peer-learn vs hire vs external expert). Competency dimensions follow ISTQB CTAL-TM v3.0 chapter 3 (Managing the Team): professional, methodological, social, and personal competence. Maps the existing team on an ongoing basis - not a point-in-time score of external candidates and not one new hire's ramp plan. Use when a QA manager needs to know what the team can do today versus what its projects demand - before quarterly planning, a training-budget decision, or opening a requisition.

Build-an-X workflow that designs a QA career ladder - parallel individual-contributor and management tracks, per-level criteria across consistent axes, and observable promotion evidence per level - modeled on public engineering career frameworks (the Dropbox Engineering Career Framework, which includes Quality Engineer and SDET roles) and the career-development guidance in Camille Fournier's The Manager's Path (ISBN 978-1491973899). The ladder defines what each level looks like over a career - not a snapshot of the team's capability today, not a scorecard for grading external candidates against one open role, and not feedback on one person's recent work. Use when a QA org needs leveling criteria - before promotion season, during compensation banding, or when senior testers ask what comes next besides management.

Drafts a synthetic monitor configuration for one critical user journey - picks the platform (Datadog Synthetics, Pingdom, Checkly, New Relic, etc.), authors the scripted-transaction body (Playwright-style for browser checks; HTTP-step for API checks), wires the cadence (typical 1-15 min), defines per-step assertions (DOM presence, API status, response shape) and aggregate alert thresholds (consecutive-failure count + on-call routing). Includes the RUM-coverage gap method for deciding which journeys to monitor: score real-user journeys from RUM / CrUX data by session volume times business value, diff against the existing monitor inventory, and emit a ranked gap list. Use when a critical journey needs continuous-in-production verification per ISTQB-canonical shift-right ("a test approach to test a system continuously in production"), or when synthetic coverage was never systematically derived from real usage data.

Turns one service's release into a written six-phase runbook: pre-flight checks, a smoke gate, a canary observation window, a named human promote gate, progressive rollout, and post-release verification. Fixes each phase's pass criteria as a delta against a recorded baseline rather than a bare absolute number, gives canary and rollout separate windows and separate thresholds, and emits a per-phase evidence table that becomes the release record. The multi-team cutover-sequence procedure - dependency-ordered gates with one named owner each, hard timeboxes, written rollback triggers, and the reverse-order rollback path - is worked in references for windows where several teams cut over interdependent services. Use when a single service is about to ship and its release steps exist only as tribal knowledge or a chat thread, or when a shared release window needs its cutover order, gate owners, and rollback path written down.

Reference catalog of the four canonical heuristic test-design models - Bach's Heuristic Test Strategy Model (HTSM) with SFDPOT product elements, Whittaker's 'How to Break Software' attack patterns, Bolton's FEW HICCUPPS consistency oracles, and the ISO/IEC 25010 quality characteristics - for use when the tester has no user story, no acceptance criteria, and no documentation. This is the zero-documentation case: it does not read from a written story, and it yields test-case ideas rather than session charters. Use as the reference layer when generating coverage for a feature with no documented input.

Test CSS print-media output via Playwright `page.emulateMedia({ media: 'print' })` + `page.pdf()` - `@page` rule (size, margin, orphans, widows), `@page :first / :left / :right` pseudo-classes, `break-before/after/inside`, `@media print` selector activation, page-break suppression on headings. Use when an app exposes a Print button or a print stylesheet exists but is untested, and users report the printed or PDF copy breaking in the wrong places while the on-screen page looks fine.

Cross-gateway, protocol-level reference for 3-D Secure (3DS 2.x) test coverage. Covers the EMVCo frictionless / challenge / not-applicable flow paths, SCA under EU PSD2, and the per-PAN test cards for Stripe, Adyen, and Braintree. The gateway-specific wrappers (adyen-test-mode / stripe-test-cards-and-webhooks / braintree-test-cards) compose this skill for single-gateway work, so use one of those for a single-gateway query. Use this skill when designing multi-gateway 3DS test coverage, auditing a 3DS redirect round-trip, or investigating a challenge-flow regression that is not gateway-specific.