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testland/test-removal-criteria

Decides which existing tests should stop existing, using five removal classes (duplicate, tautology, trivial, dead-signal, orphan) and a four-condition delete gate where every condition must hold or the verdict reverts to keep. Puts the burden of proof on removal: each deletion carries a written reason, redundant-coverage evidence from a per-test source map, and a named reviewer; a test that has merely never failed is treated as possibly load-bearing, not worthless. Use when a suite has outgrown its signal value and someone is opening a pruning change set that deletes test files; for choosing which tests to RUN per change (not delete) use regression-suite-selector, and to track accumulating low-value coverage over time use the coverage debt ledger in qa-test-reporting's test-coverage-targeter.

72

Quality

91%

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Overview
Quality
Evals
Security
Files

Quality

Content

85%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

A well-structured, conservative decision skill with a clear five-step workflow, an explicit conjunctive validation gate, and clean progressive disclosure into two real reference files. The main improvement room is trimming the embedded citation prose for token efficiency.

Suggestions

Shorten or paraphrase the inline Meszaros/Fowler quotes, linking out instead of reproducing multi-sentence passages, to reduce token cost without losing the rationale.

Consider inlining one short executable snippet for the duplicate normalized-signature check so the most common class has copy-paste-ready guidance in SKILL.md rather than only in the reference.

DimensionReasoningScore

Conciseness

Mostly efficient and free of generic concept explanations; however several embedded citation quotes (Meszaros, Fowler) and the narrative framing around the selection/removal axis add length that could be trimmed without losing the decision logic.

4 / 5

Actionability

Provides a concrete classification table, class-specific confirmation tests, an executable TypeScript fold example, a worked-example table, and an anti-patterns table with 'Instead' actions; the detailed detection code lives in the reference file, leaving only minor gaps inline.

4 / 5

Workflow Clarity

Five clearly sequenced steps with an explicit conjunctive delete gate as the validation checkpoint, plus feedback rules ('any failed or missing-input condition reverts the verdict to keep') — strong validation for a destructive batch operation.

5 / 5

Progressive Disclosure

Clear overview in SKILL.md with two well-signaled, one-level-deep references (applying-the-removal-classes.md, removal-ledger-and-report-format.md), both real files; decision logic is split appropriately from detailed methods and report format.

5 / 5

Total

18

/

20

Passed

Description

92%Weight 40%Scale 1-5

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

A precise, third-person description that clearly states capabilities, trigger conditions, and boundaries against related skills. It is comprehensive on what and when, with only minor gaps in natural trigger-term synonyms.

DimensionReasoningScore

Specificity

Lists multiple concrete actions and mechanisms: five named removal classes (duplicate, tautology, trivial, dead-signal, orphan), a four-condition delete gate, written reasons, per-test source-map evidence, and a named reviewer — comprehensive coverage of what the skill does.

5 / 5

Completeness

Explicitly answers both what ('Decides which existing tests should stop existing...') and when ('Use when a suite has outgrown its signal value and someone is opening a pruning change set that deletes test files'), with concrete trigger phrases and explicit out-of-scope boundaries.

5 / 5

Trigger Term Quality

Includes natural triggers like 'deletes test files' and 'pruning change set', but a few common phrasings users would actually say ('remove redundant tests', 'delete tests') are not present, leaving minor gaps.

4 / 5

Distinctiveness Conflict Risk

Carves a clear niche (test removal vs. selection) and explicitly disambiguates from sibling skills (regression-suite-selector, qa-test-reporting's test-coverage-targeter), giving minimal conflict risk.

5 / 5

Total

19

/

20

Passed

Validation

100%

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation16 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

No warnings or errors.

Reviewed

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