Read Testing principles before review; it defines the shared criteria, compact test card, safe execution boundary, and evidence required for each disposition.
Scope
Review without editing or deleting the target's tests, product, requirements, or generated state. A request to review is not permission to execute destructive probes or update snapshots. Use safe isolated execution when authorized and available; otherwise report the proposed check as unvalidated. Prefer a reviewer independent of the test author where available; disclose when that is not possible.
Procedure
- Resolve architecture, contract altitude, and the review boundary. Read the governing repository instructions and architecture needed for the scope. Trace important tests upward from their observation boundary to the stable component/public/system contract or holistic goal they protect. Identify executable components/responsibilities, stable user/public/machine/cross-component contracts, destructive or durable-state boundaries, authorization/security/data-integrity risks, and cheaper deterministic enforcement from typing, schemas, compilation, linting, static analysis, or contract validators. Inventory the scoped tests, fixtures, production entry points/consumers, and CI selection, then map tests into provisional protection families by claim, boundary, and relevant failure mechanism. Read only the dependencies needed to decide a disposition; carry remaining scope as an explicit gap.
- Trace at the resolution that can change the decision. Deep-trace high-consequence, suspicious, high-cost, or uncertain families first. For each disposition-relevant test or representative family member, map setup -> production path -> observation -> assertion. Identify its intended claim and authority, the failure consequence, what it actually observes, and what can remain broken while it passes. Split a family whenever variants, boundaries, forbidden effects, diagnostics, or fault mechanisms differ materially. Separate characterization from approved intent. Do not infer importance from names, test counts, or covered lines.
- Challenge effectiveness. Apply the shared oracle, fault-sensitivity, refactor-tolerance, fidelity, isolation, and diagnostic criteria. Prefer evidence from stable system/integration/contract/lifecycle behavior over implementation details when both address the same risk. Select relevant controls only when they materially improve confidence. Confirm any original defect or seeded fault reaches the intended observation, not collection/setup failure. Do not require mutation execution for every test or call static inspection observed fault detection.
- Assess maintenance-adjusted value. Apply the shared economic model to each disposition-relevant test/family. Record expected protection benefit separately from expected ownership cost. Benefit includes consequence avoided, regression exposure, detection effectiveness, unique protection, contract durability, and feedback value. Ownership cost includes human/agent context, implementation/prose coupling and churn, fixtures/data, execution, diagnosis, flakiness, environment/dependencies, refactor drag, duplication, and review/coordination. Compare tests by the consequential failures they uniquely exclude and the contract altitude they protect, not by pyramid quotas. Treat unit tests that fail under behavior-preserving refactors because private helpers, constants, branches, or decomposition changed as implementation-coupled unless those details are authoritative contracts. Prefer a broader lifecycle/contract carrier when it provides equivalent or stronger useful protection with acceptable diagnostics.
- Recommend a disposition. Use KEEP, STRENGTHEN, REPLACE, CONSOLIDATE, REMOVAL-CANDIDATE, or UNRESOLVED with the evidence defined in the shared guide. Do not use missing documentation, high cost, or unmeasured sensitivity alone as proof of uselessness. For consolidation/removal, answer: if this test disappeared, which plausible important regression could now pass undetected? Identify the surviving carrier for every required guarantee and any residual risk.
- Specify the next validation. Distinguish product, requirement, oracle, boundary/interface, and test/CI-harness defects. For a proposed change, define success and protected behavior before its implementation; compare baseline and candidate under equivalent relevant conditions, adding independent/unseen scenarios for substantial redesign where practical. No corrections are applied by this review. Carry unresolved authority or evidence into the handoff.
Report
Return scope/revision, sources read, and uncovered scope before the findings. For each disposition-relevant test or explicitly bounded protection family, use a row containing:
Test/location | intended claim + authority | actual observation/boundary
Protection benefit | ownership cost | effectiveness + evidence | disposition
Correction category | surviving protection / gap | next discriminating validation
Distinguish observed defects, inferred risks, and proposed probes. Report claim -> validator -> observed result -> evidence boundary. Include the exact command/selection when run, outcomes, skips/xfails, omitted suites, and unavailable environments. Authored evals and source inspection are not passing runtime evidence.
Conclude with REVIEW COMPLETE when the declared scope was assessed, or REVIEW PARTIAL with
unread dependencies or missing evidence; separately state whether required behavior is supported,
failed, or unvalidated. Report No material test findings in the assessed scope when applicable.
Completion of a review never means every test passed, and a removal candidate never authorizes deletion.
For findings needing causal investigation, read Test Failure Mindset or Root-Cause Tracing Process; carry the contract and evidence forward. For new/replacement test planning use Test Designer. When project commands are unknown, DH Meta Docs routes quality-gate discovery. Preserve the caller's existing SAM verdict, artifact registration, and status contract.