design-testing-strategy — Claude Code skill: pick your test types

What design-testing-strategy does

Run this skill before writing tests. It walks your artifact through seven decision gates, Gate 0 to Gate 6, and each gate returns its own yes or no. Gates do not veto each other, so one artifact can end up with unit, integration, contract and property-based tests all switched on.

After the gates you apply skip heuristics to drop types with low return, then fill in the test matrix schema. Field order in that schema matters. Rejected types and deliberate skips go into their own lists. The skill finishes with a markdown list of test cases built from ISTQB techniques and a cross-check against a worked example: a pure function, an HTTP endpoint with a database, or a UI component.

Inside you get the gate table with ON and OFF conditions, a criticality scale from NONE to HIGH, a reference of test types with frameworks, and the worked examples. The skill distills 14 industry sources. When criticality is NONE — docs, formatting, generated code — Gate 0 fires and the selected types list stays empty. That is the point: no tests where they prove nothing.