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test-driven-dev

Test-driven development with red-green-refactor loop. Use when user wants to build features or fix bugs using TDD, mentions "red-green-refactor", wants integration tests, or asks for test-first development.

skills/test-driven-dev/SKILL.md

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# Test-Driven Development

## Philosophy

**Core principle**: Tests should verify behavior through public interfaces, not implementation details. Code can change entirely; tests shouldn't.

**Good tests** are integration-style: they exercise real code paths through public APIs. They describe _what_ the system does, not _how_ it does it. A good test reads like a specification - "user can checkout with valid cart" tells you exactly what capability exists. These tests survive refactors because they don't care about internal structure.

**Bad tests** are coupled to implementation. They mock internal collaborators, test private methods, or verify through external means (like querying a database directly instead of using the interface). The warning sign: your test breaks when you refactor, but behavior hasn't changed. If you rename an internal function and tests fail, those tests were testing implementation, not behavior.

See [tests.md](tests.md) for examples and [mocking.md](mocking.md) for mocking guidelines.

## Anti-Pattern: Horizontal Slices