A test suite can be large, green, and unhealthy. Flaky reruns, quarantined checks, duplicate intent, slow tails, and unclear ownership all reduce the trust of the signal.
Why this Skill is needed
The Test Suite Health Analysis Skill reviews suite health from CI history, duration distributions, reruns, quarantine lists, duplicate tests, maintenance records, and defect evidence. It produces TSH-## governance candidates, not execution results.
What the Skill does
Health is a set of observable conditions, not a single green percentage.
Use this Skill to understand whether a suite is trustworthy and maintainable enough for its intended feedback role. It does not execute tests, infer coverage from counts, or accept risk for a Human.
A good TSH finding includes subject, preconditions, concern, source evidence, validation, impact, priority, owner, close condition, and evidence state.
Use it when a suite is slow or flaky, quarantine keeps growing, duplicate tests are suspected, or CI health needs an evidence-based review.
What it does not do
The Test Suite Health Analysis Skill can organize material, evidence, and next actions for Health finding. It does not replace:
- Confirmation of rules, scope, and risk by the accountable domain owner.
- A real environment, account, dataset, log, or run record; static analysis does not become runtime evidence by itself.
- Authorization for release, compliance, production actions, or residual-risk acceptance.
- A Human decision when supplied sources conflict.
What it checks
The value of this Skill is not another keyword list. It connects each focus area to an observable input, a judgment, and a way to close the loop. Start with a small matrix based on the source Skill’s output contract:
| Focus | Question before analysis | Handoff output |
|---|---|---|
| Health finding | Flakiness, duration, duplication, isolation, or maintenance concern | TSH ID and evidence |
| Impact | How the issue affects trust or feedback | Priority and boundary |
| Validation action | Smallest check before changing the suite | Owner and method |
| Residual state | What remains unassessed or NOT_RUN | No coverage claim |
If a row has only a conventional expectation and no source or validation method, keep it open instead of turning it into a pass.
Audit inputs before you start
Before analyzing Health finding, classify the input into six evidence states. A gap is not automatically a failure, but it must not disappear inside the conclusion.
| State | Meaning | How this Skill should handle it |
|---|---|---|
| known | Directly supported by the supplied material | Keep the source, version, and time with the judgment |
| missing | Needed for this pass but not supplied | Name the smallest evidence action and limit the conclusion |
| conflicting | Sources disagree | Show both sources and route the conflict to an owner |
| stale | Present but outside the relevant version or time window | Mark freshness; old evidence is not current proof |
| out_of_scope | Related but excluded from this pass | Keep the boundary explicit |
| assumptions | Temporarily adopted to continue analysis | State how and when the assumption will be checked |
Keep the input version, scope, environment, evidence locations, and accountable owner together. Without a run record, deliver analysis, design, or a validation plan—not an execution pass.
From problem to structured Finding
Connect the source, scope, evidence state, analysis, owner, action, close condition, and validation before writing the conclusion. The case below keeps this Skill’s identifier and domain context.
Keep the decision layers separate
For Health finding, do not compress four different kinds of language into “recommended to pass”:
| Layer | How to write it | Application here |
|---|---|---|
| Fact | What the supplied material directly shows | Cite the source, version, input, or run record for the focus |
| Evidence-backed Inference | What several facts support together | Show the inference chain and retain uncertainty |
| Recommendation | The smallest next action | Name the evidence, review, execution, or regression path |
| Human Decision | What an accountable person must decide | Leave scope, risk acceptance, resources, and release meaning to the owner |
A complete case
This case follows Input, Analysis, Finding, Decision, and Validation. When material is incomplete, keep missing, conflicting, or assumptions visible instead of turning them into a pass.
Input
| Material | What to provide | What to do when it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Run history | Duration distribution, retries, failures, environment, and versions | Keep missing windows visible |
| Suite inventory | Tests, ownership, quarantine, tags, and duplicate intent | Do not count files as coverage |
| Maintenance and defects | Repair records, changed areas, escapes, and failure clusters | Separate correlation from cause |
| Decision boundary | Feedback role, owner, stop condition, and next validation | Do not approve release |
Use a request like this:
Use the test-suite-health-analysis Skill.
Task: Assess the checkout pre-merge suite after three weeks of rising reruns and a growing quarantine list.
Inputs: [CI history, duration data, quarantine records, test inventory, owners, defect links]
Scope: [pre-merge checkout suite]
Constraints: [do not execute tests or call candidate count coverage]
Produce TSH-## findings with source, evidence state, impact, owner, close condition, and smallest validation action.Analysis
Use the input, matrix, and evidence state to form the judgment before writing the Finding; keep missing material as a gap.
Finding
Focused example: Separate flaky reruns from real product failures
Reruns increased after a browser upgrade, while product defects stayed stable and most failures cluster in one fixture. The Skill should identify an environment or isolation hypothesis, keep product-risk inference separate, and request a controlled replay. It should not delete the tests or call the suite healthy from one green rerun.
The analysis describes supplied suite-health evidence. It cannot prove execution coverage, root cause, or release readiness.
Example finding: turn one problem into a handoff
The field example below shows the recording pattern; it is not an execution result.
If the supplied material cannot prove that Health finding meets its contract, write the finding like this. It does not invent the missing rule or turn missing evidence into a failure.
| Field | Example wording |
|---|---|
| Source and scope | Record the requirement, version, environment, and the concrete object for Health finding |
| Finding | The condition or result for Health finding is not yet traceable to evidence |
| Evidence state | missing / assumptions; use conflicting when sources disagree |
| Impact and priority | Name the affected user, journey, or delivery decision without inflating severity |
| Owner and Human decision | Ask the product, engineering, security, or test owner to confirm the rule and trade-off |
| Action and close condition | Add the smallest missing evidence; close only when source, judgment, and owner can be reviewed |
| Validation | Name one repeatable check, query, or run and retain the raw artifact |
The point is to let the next person walk from the finding back to the source and run an action that can change the decision.
Decision
The accountable owner confirms the decision question and risk trade-off; the Skill does not make that choice.
Validation
Before closing the finding, run the stated validation and retain the raw artifact. Without an execution record, the status remains unverified.
How a Finding enters the next stage
Handoff output
| Output field | Why it exists | Example status |
|---|---|---|
| Health finding | Flakiness, duration, duplication, isolation, or maintenance concern | TSH ID and evidence |
| Impact | How the issue affects trust or feedback | Priority and boundary |
| Validation action | Smallest check before changing the suite | Owner and method |
| Residual state | What remains unassessed or NOT_RUN | No coverage claim |
Every conclusion should point to a source, evidence state, and next action. If evidence is missing, use pending, blocked, unassessed, or NOT_SCORED instead of filling the gap with confidence.
Next-stage route
At minimum, hand off the source, evidence state, owner, close condition, and validation action; the next-stage conclusion remains bounded by the evidence state.
How to prepare better input
Provide a fixed time window, run IDs, duration and retry data, quarantine history, suite and owner inventory, defect links, environment changes, and the feedback role the suite serves.
A useful handoff includes input versions, scope, time window, evidence index, assumptions, Human decision boundary, and the smallest validation action.
Working with other Skills
- Test Maintenance Cost Analysis:measures repair and ownership cost.
- Test Runtime Optimization:handles slow feedback with baselines.
- Test Effectiveness Analysis:relates suite signals to risk detection.
Common traps
- Using test count or green percentage as overall health.
- Treating quarantine as deletion without recording the protected risk.
- Calling a cluster a root cause without environment or reproduction evidence.
Install and invoke
npx skills add https://github.com/naodeng/awesome-qa-skills/tree/main/skills/en/testing-types/test-suite-health-analysis -gUse the test-suite-health-analysis Skill.
Include objective, scope, versions, evidence paths, constraints, and decision boundary.
Audit inputs first, preserve evidence states, and finish with owner, close condition, and validation method.FAQ
Should quarantine always be removed?
No. First record why it was quarantined, what risk it protects, who owns it, and what closes or escalates the quarantine.
Does a healthy suite mean full coverage?
No. Health concerns signal trust and maintainability; coverage is a separate traceable question.
The Skill is most useful when attached to one real project artifact and kept with its source evidence. Start narrow, validate the uncertain part, and expand only when evidence supports it.
References
Source Skill and execution contract
The complete execution contract lives in Test Suite Health Analysis prompt. The source directory may also contain evaluation cases and supporting material.
Static plans, file presence, and dry runs keep their evidence state. They do not become runtime proof, an all-passed claim, or release approval.
Reference links
- Test Suite Health Analysis prompt:https://github.com/naodeng/awesome-qa-skills/tree/main/skills/en/testing-types/test-suite-health-analysis/prompts/test-suite-health-analysis.md
- Test Suite Health Analysis Skill source:https://github.com/naodeng/awesome-qa-skills/tree/main/skills/en/testing-types/test-suite-health-analysis
- Test Suite Health Analysis details:https://inaodeng.com/en/qaskills/test-suite-health-analysis/
- Awesome QA Skills on GitHub:https://github.com/naodeng/awesome-qa-skills