msd-core/TESTING-STANDARDS.md

Testing Standards

This document is the authoritative reference for test correctness contracts, enforcement rules, and the test-rigor policies adopted in ADR 456 (docs/adr/456-test-rigor-architecture.md).

It orients you to the existing docs without duplicating them:

• Suite naming, CI matrix, per-suite scripts → docs/TESTING-SUITES.md
• Test runner imports, setup/teardown patterns, fixture formatting, QA matrix → CONTRIBUTING.md — "Testing Standards"
• Concrete demo tests for each requirement → TEST-EXAMPLES.md
• Machine-greppable predicates (RULESET.TESTS.*) → CONTEXT.md — "Test rules and lint"

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Six test-rigor contracts

Every test in this project must satisfy these six contracts. They apply to new tests and to revisions of existing tests.

1. Exercise real code, not source or output text

Tests call exported functions or run the CLI and parse structured output. They do not readFileSync a source file and assert on its text content. They do not assert on raw stdout/stderr strings beyond exit-code confirmation.

Compliant:

const { stdout } = await runGsdTools(['plan', '--json']);
const result = JSON.parse(stdout);
assert.strictEqual(result.phases[0].id, 'plan-1.1');

Non-compliant:

const src = readFileSync('./bin/lib/plan.cjs', 'utf8');
assert(src.includes('plan-1.1')); // never do this

Enforcement: local/no-source-grep (ESLint, error; promoted repo-wide by #3313).

2. No vacuous-truth assertions

Assertions must be capable of failing given a plausible defect in the SUT. An assertion whose left-hand side is always truthy regardless of SUT behavior does not add coverage.

Non-compliant:

assert(true);
assert.ok(output !== undefined); // output is unconditionally set above

Compliant: Assert on a value that the SUT computed and that a mutation of the SUT could change.

Enforcement: Code review + local/no-source-grep (catches a common vacuous sub-pattern). No automated rule covers all shapes; code review is the primary gate.

3. No pass-always tests

A test that passes regardless of whether the feature it describes is implemented is worse than no test: it inflates the count while providing false confidence.

The test must be capable of failing if the feature is absent or broken. Write the test first (red phase of TDD), confirm it fails with a stub implementation, then implement.

Enforcement: local/no-source-grep, code review, and Stryker mutation score (surviving mutants in covered paths signal pass-always tests).

4. Test the claimed path

The test name describes a behavior. The test body must exercise that behavior through the implementation path, not through a mock that replaces the entire SUT.

If the test name says "acquireLock expires after TTL," the test must call acquireLock (not a hand-rolled stub that does nothing) and assert that a lock acquired at time T is expired at time T + TTL + 1ms.

Enforcement: Code review. Stryker mutation score on uncovered paths.

5. Complete mocks

When mocking a dependency, mock only the dependency — not the SUT behavior itself. A mock that returns a hardcoded value from inside the function under test is a pass-always test in disguise.

External I/O (filesystem, network, clock) is the appropriate scope for mocking. Business logic inside the SUT is not mocked; it is exercised.

Enforcement: Code review.

6. Counter-tests for negative space

For every behavioral contract, at least one test must exercise an input that the SUT should reject or handle differently from the happy path. Examples: missing required argument, value at boundary + 1, hostile input.

See CONTRIBUTING.md — "QA Matrix Requirements" for the twelve-case matrix. Apply the cases relevant to the changed surface.

Enforcement: Code review, no-only-tests/no-only-tests ESLint rule (prevents happy-path-only merges via test.only).

Standing rule: assert the degraded verdict, not just "did not throw"

A counter-test that feeds a hostile or failing input satisfies the letter of contract 6 above and can still be worthless. If a function has an error or fallback branch — a guard that degrades permissively on bad input, a resolver that falls back to a default root, a lock that expires — the test for that branch must assert the specific degraded verdict the branch produces, not merely that the call completed without throwing or returned some value of the right type.

Non-compliant (the actual pre-fix shape of tests/worktree-safety.test.cjs's resolveWorktreeContext timeout counter-test, per #3050 finding 2 and epic #3051 Phase 3, generalized here as #3053 H4):

// A liveness test wearing a correctness test's name — it proves the call
// survived a timeout, not that it degraded to the RIGHT shape.
test('resolveWorktreeContext handles a timeout', () => {
  const result = resolveWorktreeContext('/repo/wt', { execGit: makeTimeoutStub() });
  assert.doesNotThrow(() => resolveWorktreeContext('/repo/wt', { execGit: makeTimeoutStub() }));
  assert.strictEqual(typeof result.effectiveRoot, 'string'); // true of ANY string, including the wrong one
});

Compliant (the actual fixed test, tests/worktree-safety.test.cjs):

test('returns effectiveRoot=cwd, mode=current_directory, reason=git_timed_out on timeout, not throw', () => {
  const result = resolveWorktreeContext('/tmp', { execGit: makeTimeoutStub() });
  assert.deepStrictEqual(result, {
    effectiveRoot: '/tmp',           // the specific degraded value, not just "a string"
    mode: 'current_directory',
    reason: 'git_timed_out',
  });
});

This is not the same requirement as the input-rejection rule above it. A test can already satisfy "feed the SUT a hostile input" while still failing this one, if it never checks what the SUT did in response. Two shapes are explicitly out of scope for this rule — they are not fail-open guards and adding this counter-test to them would be noise, not signal:

• A branch that re-throws or propagates the error rather than producing a degraded verdict — contract 4 above ("test the claimed path") already covers it via assert.throws.
• A branch that returns a documented, structured error signal that the test already asserts on directly (a three-state policy that fails closed on malformed input, a dispatch convention, an {isError: true} return shape) — the structured field is the verdict; asserting on it already satisfies this rule.

Why this isn't a lint rule. A pattern scan for fail-open shapes was measured directly against this repo's src/*.cts during epic #3051: it scored 1 true positive against 3 false positives (a documented three-state policy, a dispatch convention, and a structured isError return each looked like a fail-open guard and were not). The permissive-verdict shape is module-specific, not mechanically enumerable, so a lint rule here would be both incomplete and noisy. This is a code-review expectation, not a CI gate — it will not fail a build on its own; it fails when a reviewer (human or /code-review) lets a "did not throw" test stand in for a correctness test.

Enforcement: Code review only — deliberately not lint-enforced (see above). Cross-linked from CONTRIBUTING.md — "QA Matrix Requirements" so reviewers see it at the point they already apply the negative-space matrix.

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New policies (ADR 456)

No timing or elapsed-time assertions

Do not assert on wall-clock elapsed time. Such assertions test the host machine, not the SUT, and fail spuriously on loaded CI runners.

Non-compliant:

const start = Date.now();
await doWork();
assert(Date.now() - start < 200, 'must complete in 200ms');

Enforcement: local/no-elapsed-assertion (ESLint, currently warn; promotion to error was sequenced behind #3314, now delivered — ADR-456 §(a) is amended with a reachability-based selection rule covering all three clock-control mechanisms this repo uses, and the direct-use modules carrying real time-gating logic (commands.cts, init.cts, io.cts) have deterministic backfill coverage. The actual warn→error promotion is tracked at #3331, since #3314's own precondition-handoff target, #1885, closed before this issue landed). Also no-restricted-syntax ban on performance.now() comparisons in assertions.

Clock-seam pattern for concurrency

Concurrency logic must be tested deterministically, via one of three reachability-selected mechanisms (see ADR-456 §(a)): an injectable clock seam for modules that accept {clock = Date}, node:test mock.timers for in-process direct-Date-reading code, or the GSD_TEST_MODE+GSD_NOW_MS subprocess pin (routed through realClock) for CLI-spawned code. Real OS scheduler races are non-deterministic on loaded CI runners and are not a permitted test pattern regardless of which mechanism applies.

Compliant pattern:

// Production code
function acquireLock(resource, { clock = Date } = {}) {
  const deadline = clock.now() + LOCK_TTL_MS;
  // ... implementation uses clock.now()
}

// Test
test('lock expires after TTL', (t) => {
  t.mock.timers.enable(['Date']);
  t.mock.timers.setTime(0);
  acquireLock('res');
  t.mock.timers.tick(LOCK_TTL_MS + 1);
  assert.strictEqual(isLockExpired('res'), true);
});

Enforcement: local/no-magic-sleep-in-tests (bans setTimeout/sleep/delay inside test bodies; ESLint, error). Code review catches the race pattern directly.

Property-based testing tier

Modules that implement parsing, transformation, budget/limit logic, or any bijective contract must include at least one fast-check (fc) property test asserting a domain invariant. Property tests live in *.test.cjs files alongside unit tests; no separate suite tag is required.

Invariant categories to consider: round-trip, monotonicity, boundary containment, idempotency.

Threshold: No hard per-file threshold is enforced by CI tooling; the gate is Stryker mutation score (see below). Property tests are the mechanism that drives mutation score above the threshold on logic-heavy paths.

Enforcement: Code review verifies that property tests exist for modules in scope. Stryker mutation score below 80 % blocks merge (see next section).

Mutation testing — 80 % threshold

Stryker runs in incremental mode (--since origin/next) on the ubuntu-latest / Node 24 CI leg as a PR-gating signal. The default threshold is 80 % mutation score (killed / total mutants in the changed scope). PRs that drop below this threshold must either add tests that kill the surviving mutants or add the specific path to stryker.config.mjs with a documented reason.

A surviving mutant is a concrete specification of missing coverage. Treat it as a failing test, not as a metric.

Enforcement: stryker run --since origin/next in CI. Threshold configured in stryker.config.mjs.

Delete-bad-tests policy

Tests in the following categories are deleted and replaced with compliant tests in the same PR. They are not commented out, not skipped, and not annotated with a permanent // allow-test-rule exemption:

Category	Signal
Pass-always	Assertion always evaluates truthy regardless of SUT state
Vacuous-truth	LHS is computed from the same expression as the SUT input
Source-grep	readFileSync on a source file + text assertion
Elapsed-time	Assertion on Date.now() delta or performance.now() comparison
Real-race	Test outcome depends on OS scheduler timing
Permanent allow-test-rule	Exemption with no tracking issue and no deadline

"Replaced" means: in the same PR, add a behavioral test that exercises the logical path the deleted test was intended to cover, using the typed-surface mandate (contract 1 above) and, where concurrency is involved, the clock-seam pattern.

Real multi-process race tests are deleted once the corresponding deterministic clock-seam test covers the same logical path. No permanent quarantine.

Enforcement: ESLint rules catch source-grep, magic-sleep, and elapsed-assertion shapes. Code review is the gate for pass-always and vacuous-truth. The delete-bad-tests sweep (tracked separately) addresses the backlog of pre-ADR 456 tests.

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ESLint rule reference

Rule	Severity	What it catches
local/no-source-grep	error (promoted by #3313)	readFileSync on source files + text assertions; assert.match/doesNotMatch on raw stdout/stderr
local/no-magic-sleep-in-tests	error	setTimeout/sleep/delay calls inside test()/it()/describe() bodies
local/no-elapsed-assertion	warn → error (#3314)	Assertions on Date.now() delta, process.hrtime(), performance.now() comparisons
no-only-tests/no-only-tests	error	test.only/describe.only/it.only committed to non-scratch files
no-restricted-syntax (ban 1)	error	Top-level setTimeout in ExpressionStatement
no-restricted-syntax (ban 2)	error	.only member access on test/it/describe (belt-and-suspenders)

local/no-source-grep and local/no-magic-sleep-in-tests now ship at error (promoted by #3313, absorbing the cleanup sweep originally tracked at #453). local/no-elapsed-assertion remains warn — #3314 delivered its precondition (ADR-456 §(a) amended with a reachability-based 3-mechanism rule; commands.cts/init.cts/io.cts backfilled with deterministic coverage), but does not itself own the warn→error promotion (mirroring the same handover boundary the epic draws for its other items) — that promotion is tracked at #3331. New violations added after the acceptance of ADR 456 are out of policy regardless of the current ESLint severity.

ESLint harness details: docs/adr/452-eslint-lint-harness.md.

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Markdownlint compliance

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