test-edge_skill

Overview

This skill helps you design and prioritize edge case tests for software and scripts. It focuses on boundary conditions, null/empty inputs, overflow limits, malformed data, and error-path coverage. The output is a prioritized test plan suitable for implementation in shell-based test suites.

How this skill works

Provide a target function, API, command-line utility, or data schema and the skill inspects likely failure modes. It generates a checklist of concrete test cases grouped by priority (Must/Should/Could/Won't) and maps each case to verification steps and expected outcomes. The plan emphasizes minimal reproducible steps and clear triggers for automated shell tests.

When to use it

• Designing unit or integration tests for new features
• Auditing existing test coverage for robustness gaps
• Preparing regression suites before releases
• Hardening CLIs, scripts, or services against malformed inputs
• Validating limits before performance or load tests

Best practices

• Start with Must-priority tests that prevent crashes and data corruption
• Include explicit expected outputs and exit codes for each case
• Automate reproducible cases in shell scripts with input fixtures and cleanup
• Cover both valid boundary values and immediate off-by-one neighbors
• Document assumptions (max sizes, default fallbacks, encoding) alongside tests

Example use cases

• Generate tests for numeric ranges: min, max, off-by-one, overflow wraparound
• Create null/empty input scenarios for configuration parsers and environment variables
• Test file and memory limits by creating large fixtures and observing failures
• Produce malformed-encoding and unicode tests for text-processing utilities
• Define rate-limit and quota-exhaustion scenarios for APIs and job queues