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Brooks-Lint

Free

Enhance your test suite quality with classic engineering insights.

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Free · Opens the source repo

What Brooks-Lint does

Brooks-Lint is a specialized skill designed to perform a comprehensive quality review of your test suite, drawing from twelve influential engineering texts. The primary focus is on well-regarded works such as 'xUnit Test Patterns', 'The Art of Unit Testing', 'How Google Tests Software', and 'Working Effectively with Legacy Code'. This skill helps diagnose common structural issues within your test suite, including brittleness and excessive reliance on mocks, which can lead to fragile tests that are difficult to maintain and extend.

The process begins by establishing a map of the existing test suite, followed by a systematic scan for various decay risks as outlined in the provided test guide. By applying the Iron Law and utilizing a structured report template, Brooks-Lint produces actionable insights that can significantly improve the robustness of your testing practices. This makes it an invaluable tool for developers and teams looking to enhance their testing strategies and ensure their test suites are effective and reliable.

To get started, users should familiarize themselves with the setup instructions, which include reviewing common guidelines and understanding the specific risks associated with test decay. The skill emphasizes the importance of context, ensuring that the review process is tailored to the unique characteristics of the user's project and environment. By leveraging the insights from classic literature, Brooks-Lint not only identifies issues but also provides a framework for continuous improvement in testing methodologies.

When to use it

Use Brooks-Lint when you need to evaluate and enhance the quality of your test suite based on established engineering principles.

When not to use it

Avoid using this skill if your project does not have a defined test suite or if you are looking for automated test generation rather than a quality review.

What you can build with it

Evaluating a Legacy Test Suite

When working on a legacy codebase, Brooks-Lint can help identify issues in the existing test suite, ensuring it meets modern testing standards.

Improving Test Reliability

Use Brooks-Lint to analyze your test suite for brittleness and excessive mocking, leading to more reliable and maintainable tests.

Training New Team Members

Leverage Brooks-Lint as a teaching tool for new developers, providing them with insights from classic engineering texts to improve their testing practices.

How to install Brooks-Lint

View source

1. Install with the skills CLI

npx skills add sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills/brooks-test --agent claude-code

2. Or install it manually

Download the skill folder and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/ for all projects, or .claude/skills/ to scope it to one repo. Restart Claude Code so it picks up the new skill.

Anthropic's agentic coding CLI, and the reference implementation of Agent Skills. Drop a skill folder into ~/.claude/skills and Claude Code loads it automatically whenever a task matches the skill's description. Claude Code docs

Inside SKILL.md

Written by sickn33

Brooks-Lint — Test Quality Review

When to Use

Use this skill when you need test quality review drawing on twelve classic engineering books — with primary focus on xUnit Test Patterns, The Art of Unit Testing, How Google Tests Software, and Working Effectively with Legacy Code — that diagnoses structural problems in an existing test suite: brittleness, mock...

Setup

  1. Read ../_shared/common.md for the Iron Law, Project Config, Report Template, and Health Score rules
  2. Read ../_shared/source-coverage.md for book-level coverage, exceptions, and tradeoffs
  3. Read ../_shared/test-decay-risks.md for test-space symptom definitions and source attributions
  4. Read test-guide.md in this directory for the test quality review framework

Process

If the user has not shared test files or pointed to a test directory: apply Auto Scope Detection from ../_shared/common.md to determine the review scope before proceeding.

  1. Build the test suite map (guide's "Before You Start" section)
  2. Scan for each test decay risk in the order specified (Steps 1–4 of the guide)
  3. Apply the Iron Law and output using the Report Template (Step 5 of the guide)

Mode line in report: Test Quality Review

Limitations

  • Use this skill only when the task clearly matches its upstream source and local project context.
  • Verify commands, generated code, dependencies, credentials, and external service behavior before applying changes.
  • Do not treat examples as a substitute for environment-specific tests, security review, or user approval for destructive or costly actions.

Frequently asked questions about Brooks-Lint

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