What problem does it solve?
Most integration tests rely on mocked dependencies or in-memory database substitutes that do not match production environments, leading to false positives and missed critical bugs like SQL dialect mismatches, constraint violations, and service wiring errors. This Skill eliminates that risk by enforcing 2026 best practices for real, reliable integration testing.
Core Features & Use Cases
- 2026 Best Practices Enforcement: Implements the Testing Trophy model (integration as the fat middle layer), Testcontainers for real dependency management, per-test isolation via transaction rollback or fresh containers, and test data builders instead of raw SQL fixtures.
- Multi-Language Guidance: Provides BAD vs SAFE code examples for 7 languages (C#, Java, Python, C, C++, TypeScript, SQL) to avoid common anti-patterns like mocked databases at the integration boundary.
- Triage and Guardrails: Includes red lines to prevent toxic test patterns, severity tiers for findings, TDD flow for test-first development, and integration with the CTO Chief refinement loop to ensure all warnings are treated as critical blockers.
- Use Case: For a SaaS product with a Postgres-backed user API, this Skill writes tests that verify CRUD operations, unique email constraints, and concurrent write handling against a real Testcontainers Postgres instance, catching bugs that in-memory SQLite tests would miss.
Quick Start
Use the integration-test-writer skill to create integration tests for your new order processing API that verify it correctly handles payment failures and inventory rollbacks against a real Postgres container, including tests for concurrent order submissions.
