skills/.changeset/tdd-reference-only-seams.md
Matt Pocock 80e9dcc685 tdd: drop the refactor stage — red → green, not red → green → refactor
Refactoring belongs to the review stage, not the implementation loop.
Remove the refactor rule and the now-orphaned refactoring.md (its home is
the review skill), and point the loop's rule at the review skill so it
isn't re-added.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-06-30 09:48:57 +01:00

995 B

mattpocock-skills
patch

Reshape the tdd skill into reference-only. The red → green → refactor loop is anchored by leading words the model already holds, so the step-by-step Workflow was largely restating the loop and duplicating the horizontal-slicing anti-pattern. Dropped the Workflow and per-cycle checklist; folded their one durable idea — vertical slices / tracer bullets — into the Anti-patterns section and a short Rules-of-the-loop list. Introduced seam as the leading word for where tests go, collapsing the old Philosophy "public interfaces" prose and the Planning "confirm interface / behaviors" handshake into one rule: test only at pre-agreed seams, confirmed with the user before any test is written.

Also dropped the refactor stage — TDD is now red → green, not red → green → refactor. Refactoring belongs to the review stage, not the implementation loop, so the refactor rule and refactoring.md were removed (its home is the review skill).