name: qa-do description: >- QA diagnostic router. Describes a testing situation or problem in plain language and identifies the right 1-3 skills to use and in what order. Use when: "which skill", "where do I start", "I'm not sure what to test", "qa:do", or any vague QA situation that doesn't map to one skill. Related: qa-start, qa-project-context, test-strategy. license: MIT metadata: author: kindlmann version: "1.0" category: foundation argument-hint: "plain-language QA situation (e.g. 'our checkout flow is slow and tests are flaky')"
<objective> Most QA situations fit a recognizable pattern. This skill takes a plain-language description of what you're trying to do or what problem you're facing, matches it to a pattern, and tells you which 1-3 skills to use and in what order. It does not duplicate content from other skills — it just diagnoses and routes. </objective>How to Use
Describe what you're trying to do or what problem you're facing. A sentence or two is enough.
The skill will output:
- Recommended skills (1-3, in order)
- Why — one line per skill explaining the role it plays
Example input: "Our E2E tests keep failing in CI but pass locally." Example output:
test-reliability— diagnose and fix flaky/environment-sensitive testsci-cd-integration— align the pipeline environment with local behavior
Common Situations and Their Skills
| Situation | Recommended Skills | Order |
|---|---|---|
| New project, no tests at all | qa-project-context → test-strategy | Context first, then strategy |
| "Tests keep breaking in CI" | test-reliability → ci-cd-integration | Reliability first, then pipeline |
| "What should we test before this release?" | risk-based-testing → release-readiness | Risk first, then checklist |
| "We need Playwright tests" | playwright-automation | Direct |
| "Write tests from this PRD/spec" | ai-test-generation | Direct |
| "Our test suite is slow and flaky" | test-reliability → qa-metrics | Diagnose first, measure second |
| "Set up test reporting" | qa-dashboard → ci-cd-integration | Dashboard design, then CI wiring |
| "Test our API" | api-testing | Direct |
| "Check accessibility compliance" | accessibility-testing | Direct |
| "We got a bug in prod, understand why" | ai-bug-triage → quality-postmortem | Triage first, then retro |
| "We're migrating from Selenium/Cypress" | test-migration | Direct |
| "Performance is degrading" | performance-testing → observability-driven-testing | Measure first, then trace |
| "Set up test data" | test-data-management | Direct |
| "Add tests to CI" | ci-cd-integration | Direct |
| "Visual changes breaking tests" | visual-testing → test-reliability | Baseline first, then stabilize |
| "We have no idea what quality looks like" | qa-metrics → qa-dashboard | Define KPIs, then surface them |
| "Third-party API is unreliable in tests" | service-virtualization | Direct |
| "Need to test on multiple browsers/devices" | cross-browser-testing | Direct |
| "Security audit coming up" | security-testing | Direct |
| "Tests depend on each other and break in random order" | test-data-management → test-reliability | Fix data isolation first |
| "Our QA is only catching bugs after dev, too late" | shift-left-testing → test-planning | Process change first, then plan |
| "We're building an AI feature and need to test it" | ai-system-testing | Direct |
When the Situation is Ambiguous
If your description maps to 3 or more skills with equal weight, one clarifying question will narrow it down. Examples:
- "Are you trying to fix something that's broken, or build new coverage from scratch?"
- "Is this a process problem (how the team works) or a tooling problem (what's running)?"
- "Is the priority speed of delivery, or confidence in correctness?"
- "Are you the only QA, or is this a team-wide change?"
Answer the clarifying question and the router will reduce to 1-2 skills.
Skill Categories Quick Reference
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Foundation | Project setup, context capture, QA onboarding |
| Strategy | Test planning, risk assessment, exploratory testing |
| Automation | Playwright, Cypress, API, unit, mobile, visual, performance |
| Specialized | Accessibility, security, cross-browser, database |
| AI-Augmented QA | Test generation, bug triage, flakiness, test quality review |
| Infrastructure | CI/CD, environments, test data, contracts, service mocks |
| Metrics | KPIs, dashboards, coverage analysis |
| Process | Shift-left, onboarding, release readiness, postmortems, compliance |
| Production & Observability | Production testing, synthetic monitoring, trace-based testing |
| Knowledge & Migration | AI system testing, chaos engineering, framework migration |
Related Skills
qa-project-context— capture project setup before using most skills; every skill checks for it firsttest-strategy— when the situation is "we need a QA strategy" rather than a specific problem