team-qa

When this skill is invoked, orchestrate the QA team through a structured testing cycle.

Decision Points: At each phase transition, use AskUserQuestion to present the user with the subagent's proposals as selectable options. Write the agent's full analysis in conversation, then capture the decision with concise labels. In collaborative mode, the user must approve before moving to the next phase. In guided mode the pipeline advances automatically unless a phase is BLOCKED; in autonomous mode it runs end to end, recording each phase outcome via log_decision. Decisions in automation_always_ask categories (is_always_ask_category helper) always prompt regardless of mode. See .claude/docs/automation-modes.md.

Phase 0: Resolve Config

!bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../hooks/yaml-helper.sh" resolve_config --keys review_mode,automation,team.size,qa.level

Resolved above — use as-is; --review overrides review_mode. No block → defaults in .claude/docs/config-resolution.md.

qa.level decides what a Logic, Integration or Config/Data story's evidence is: its automated test at standard and full; at minimal, where tests are waived (.claude/docs/coding-standards.md), the acceptance-criteria walk in Phase 5 — a story without a test is then WAIVED, not missing its evidence. The UI and Visual/Feel screenshots are required at every level.

review_mode sets director-gate depth, and this pipeline has no director gate: no phase below spawns CD-, TD-, PR- or AD-PHASE-GATE, at any review_mode. Its phase gates are the pipeline's own decision points (defined under team.size below), and the agents that work at them are team members, not director gates.

automation drives the Decision Points note above. See the Decision Points note above and .claude/docs/automation-modes.md for how each mode changes pipeline behavior.

team.size: which agents are active (orthogonal to review_mode gate-depth and workflow docs).

• individual (default): qa-tester only; qa-lead invoked at phase gates only.
• small: qa-lead + qa-tester pipeline (as documented).
• studio: qa-lead + per-story qa-tester spawn + sign-off. A non-core agent needed at individual routes through the nearest active core agent with an informational note. "Phase gate" means any phase that ends in an AskUserQuestion decision point this pipeline itself lists — a transition under Decision Points above, or a Gate step written into the pipeline below — whatever the automation mode: in guided or autonomous, where that question is skipped or logged, the phase is still a gate. Not every phase is one. Apply the test literally: if the phase below lists no decision point, it is not a gate, and an agent restricted to "phase gates only" is not spawned for it. This active-set scoping applies throughout the pipeline below: any phase that names an agent outside the active set routes through the nearest core agent rather than spawning it.

Announce the active set before Phase 1 — never let the collapse be silent. Before spawning anything, state in one line which agents this run will actually spawn, and which the pipeline below names but will not spawn at the resolved team.size. For example:

Active set (team.size: <resolved>): <the agents listed for that size above>. Not spawned this run: <every other agent this pipeline names> — consulted through <nearest active core agent>. Raise team.size (or modes.rigor) to widen.

Fill it from the team.size list directly above and the agents this file's own pipeline names — not from an example. Both sets differ per orchestrator. An agent the resolved size spawns only at phase gates (qa-lead at individual) goes in the active set with that qualifier — it is spawned, not consulted through another agent.

The pipeline below reads as a multi-agent fan-out and at the shipped default it is one or two agents — team-release names ten and runs one, team-narrative names six across five phases and runs writer alone. The collapse is correct: team.size is rigor-fronted and the narrow default is the token lever. Without saying so, a reader cannot distinguish a correctly-collapsed run from a broken pipeline, and the per-agent "routes through the nearest core agent with an informational note" rule above fires at routing time and never states the shape of the run as a whole.

This is the same rule as the skipped-check reporting elsewhere in this file: a constraint that is enforced but never surfaced is indistinguishable, to the person reading the output, from one that was never enforced.

Team Composition

• qa-lead — QA strategy, test plan generation, story classification, sign-off report
• qa-tester — Test case writing, bug report writing, manual QA documentation

How to Delegate

Use the Agent tool to spawn each team member as a subagent:

• subagent_type: qa-lead — Strategy, planning, classification, sign-off
• subagent_type: qa-tester — Test case writing and bug report writing

Brief each agent — do not dump context. Read the shared inputs once and pass a distilled brief inline: the lines each agent actually needs, never a file path for a document you have already read (an agent handed a path re-reads the whole file). Pass a path only for a document you have not read and only that agent needs.

End every agent prompt with a return contract: "Write your full output to [path] — that named path is your write authorisation under the bounded exception below, so write it without a separate approval prompt. Return only (1) the path written, (2) a ≤5-bullet summary of decisions, (3) any BLOCKED/CONCERNS items, one line each. Do not restate the documents you read." Without it, an agent returns everything it read back into this session.

Why this does not violate the Collaboration Protocol. CLAUDE.md requires an agent to ask "May I write this to [filepath]?" before Write/Edit. A subagent spawned here writes without asking, and that is a deliberate, bounded exception rather than an oversight — the same call already made for consistency-check appending to active.md. The exception holds only when all three are true: (1) the path is one you named in the prompt, so the user approved the destination when they approved the phase; (2) it is a new artifact under production/, docs/ or tests/, never an edit to existing source or config; (3) the phase that produced it is a phase gate as defined above — one the pipeline lists as ending in an AskUserQuestion before it advances, whatever the automation mode. Outside those three, the agent must ask. Do not "fix" this by asking per subagent — a prompt per agent per phase makes an orchestrator unusable, which is why the exception exists.

At team.size: studio, Phase 4 spawns one qa-tester per story, in parallel; below that, one spawn covers the whole group.

Pipeline

Phase 1: Load Context

Before doing anything else, gather the full scope:

1. Detect the current sprint or feature scope from the argument:

   • If argument is a sprint identifier (e.g., sprint-03): Glob production/sprints/sprint-*.md and match by sprint number — sprint-3, sprint-03 and sprint-003 all name sprint 3 (/sprint-plan writes sprint-NNN.md). Read the matched file. If multiple match, use the most recently modified.
   • If argument is feature: [system-name]: glob story files tagged for that system
   • If no argument: read production/session-state/active.md and production/sprint-status.yaml (if present) to infer the active sprint. If there is no sprint — at rigor: minimal there are none — ask which epic to cover and use feature: [epic-slug]; do not invent a sprint

2. Read project.stage from project.yaml (fallback production/stage.txt) to confirm the current project phase.

3. Read the open bugs in scope — the bugs already on file, before QA finds new ones: grep the **Severity**, **Status** and **System** lines of production/qa/bugs/*.md, as /bug-triage does. A bug is open unless its Status is Closed or Verified Fixed; it is in scope when its System is one the in-scope stories belong to, or it names an in-scope story — when unsure, list it. These go into the Phase 2 and Phase 6 briefs as Open bugs in scope: an open S1 or S2 here already makes the sign-off NOT APPROVED (Phase 6), whatever QA finds. No bug files → "Open bugs in scope: none on file".

4. Count stories found and report to the user:

   "QA cycle starting for [sprint/feature]. Found [N] stories. Open bugs in scope: [N — S1: n, S2: n, or none on file]. Current stage: [stage]. Ready to begin QA strategy?"

Phase 2: QA Strategy (qa-lead)

Spawn qa-lead via Agent to review all in-scope stories and produce a QA strategy.

Pass the qa-lead the Open bugs in scope from Phase 1 (ID, severity, story or system), then prompt it to:

• Read each story file

• Classify each story by type: Logic / Integration / Visual/Feel / UI / Config/Data

• Identify which stories require automated test evidence vs. manual QA — at qa.level: minimal none requires a test: a Logic, Integration or Config/Data story without one reads WAIVED under Automated Required and gets its acceptance criteria walked in manual QA

• Flag any stories with missing acceptance criteria or missing test evidence that would block QA

• Estimate manual QA effort (number of test sessions needed)

• Before assessing smoke status, check for an existing smoke check report: Glob production/qa/smoke-*.md and read the most recently modified file (if found). If a report exists, use its verdict and findings directly — do not re-interview the user. If no report exists, note: "No prior smoke check report found — run /smoke-check sprint before proceeding." and set smoke check status to UNKNOWN (treat as PASS WITH WARNINGS for the purpose of continuing). Produce a smoke check verdict: PASS / PASS WITH WARNINGS [list] / NOT ASSESSED [what did not run] / FAIL [list of failures] / UNKNOWN (no report found)

• Produce a strategy summary table and smoke check result:

  Story	Type	Automated Required	Manual Required	Blocker?

  Smoke Check: [PASS / PASS WITH WARNINGS / NOT ASSESSED / FAIL / UNKNOWN] — [source: production/qa/smoke-[date].md or "no report found"] — [details if not PASS]

  Open bugs in scope: [BUG-ID — S[n] — story or system, one per line; or "none on file"] — an open S1 or S2 is named here as a known failure

If the smoke check result is FAIL, the qa-lead must list the failures prominently. QA cannot proceed past the strategy phase with a failed smoke check.

Present the qa-lead's full strategy to the user, then use AskUserQuestion:

question: "QA Strategy Review"
options:
  - "Looks good — proceed to test plan"
  - "Adjust story types before proceeding"
  - "Skip blocked stories and proceed with the rest"
  - "Smoke check failed — fix issues and re-run /team-qa"
  - "Cancel — resolve blockers first"

If smoke check FAIL: do not proceed to Phase 3. Surface the failures from the smoke check report and stop. The user must fix them, re-run /smoke-check sprint, and then re-run /team-qa. If smoke check UNKNOWN: surface a warning — "No smoke check report found. Recommend running /smoke-check sprint before QA. Proceeding with caution." If smoke check NOT ASSESSED: surface what the report says did not run — "The last smoke check could not assess [what did not run]. Recommend re-running /smoke-check sprint once it can. Proceeding with caution." — and continue as for UNKNOWN; the sign-off cannot be APPROVED on it (Phase 6). If smoke check PASS WITH WARNINGS: note the warnings for the sign-off report and continue. If blockers are present: list them explicitly. The user may choose to skip blocked stories or cancel the cycle.

Phase 3: Test Plan Generation

Using the strategy from Phase 2, produce a structured test plan document.

The test plan should cover:

• Scope: sprint/feature name, story count, dates
• Story Classification Table: from Phase 2 strategy
• Automated Test Requirements: which stories need test files, expected paths in tests/ (none at qa.level: minimal: list the waived stories under Manual QA Scope instead)
• Manual QA Scope: which stories need manual walkthrough and what to validate
• Out of Scope: what is explicitly not being tested this cycle and why
• Entry Criteria: what must be true before QA can begin. Always include: (1) Smoke check PASS or PASS WITH WARNINGS report exists at production/qa/smoke-*.md, (2) build is stable (no crashes on launch), (3) at sprint scope, all Must Have stories are in-progress, review or done in production/sprint-status.yaml; at feature: scope, every in-scope story file's Status is In Progress, In Review or Complete. Add any sprint-specific criteria beyond these.
• Exit Criteria: what constitutes a completed QA cycle (all stories PASS or FAIL with bugs filed)

Ask: "May I write the QA plan to production/qa/qa-plan-[sprint]-[date].md?"

Write only after receiving approval.

Phase 4: Test Case Writing (qa-tester)

Smoke check is performed as part of Phase 2 (QA Strategy). If the smoke check returned FAIL in Phase 2, the cycle was stopped there. This phase only runs when the Phase 2 smoke check was PASS, PASS WITH WARNINGS, NOT ASSESSED, or UNKNOWN.

For each story requiring manual QA (Visual/Feel, UI, Integration without automated tests — and, at qa.level: minimal, where tests are waived, every Logic, Integration and Config/Data story without a test: its cases walk its acceptance criteria):

Spawn qa-tester via Agent — one per story, in parallel, at team.size: studio; one spawn covering the whole group at small and individual — providing, for each story:

• The story file path
• The relevant section of the QA plan for that story
• The GDD acceptance criteria for the system being tested (if available)
• Instructions to write detailed test cases covering all acceptance criteria
• The output path: production/qa/test-cases/[story-slug]-cases.md. Name it explicitly in the prompt, one per story.

Why the path is stated here rather than left to the orchestrator. The bounded write exception above holds only when "the path is one you named in the prompt". This is the phase that spawns agents in parallel, so it is where an unnamed destination does the most damage: each agent improvises its own, and two runs file the same artifact in two places. The phase reads correctly right up until two agents need somewhere to put their output.

Each test case set should include:

• Preconditions: game state required before testing begins
• Steps: numbered, unambiguous actions
• Expected Result: what should happen
• Actual Result: field left blank for the tester to fill in
• Pass/Fail: field left blank

Present the test cases to the user for review before execution. Group by story.

Use AskUserQuestion per story group (batched 3-4 at a time):

question: "Test cases ready for [Story Group]. Review before manual QA begins?"
options:
  - "Approved — begin manual QA for these stories"
  - "Revise test cases for [story name]"
  - "Skip manual QA for [story name] — not ready"

Phase 5: Manual QA Execution

Walk through each story in the approved manual QA list.

Batch stories into groups of 3-4 and use AskUserQuestion for each. Wait for the tester's answer and record only what they said: a result the tester did not give is never filled in for them. A story nobody answered for stays unexecuted, which makes the sign-off NOT ASSESSED — it is not BLOCKED unless they say so.

question: "Manual QA — [Story Title]\n[brief description of what to test]"
options:
  - "PASS — all acceptance criteria verified"
  - "PASS WITH NOTES — minor issues found (describe after)"
  - "FAIL — criteria not met (describe after)"
  - "BLOCKED — cannot test yet (reason)"

After each FAIL result: use AskUserQuestion to collect the failure description, then spawn qa-tester via Agent to write a formal bug report in production/qa/bugs/, in /bug-report's format — its Severity and Priority labels exactly as that template lists them (S2-High, P1-Fix this sprint, …), because /bug-triage parses them.

After each PASS or PASS WITH NOTES on a Visual/Feel or UI story, record its evidence in production/qa/evidence/. The retained screenshot is the evidence: ask the tester to save one of each screen or effect the story touched under production/qa/evidence/[story-slug]/, and confirm it is on disk — /story-done checks for a retained image, not just the write-up. A UI story is closed by those screenshots; a Visual/Feel story also needs the lead sign-off. Then ask "May I write the evidence for [story titles] to production/qa/evidence/?", once per story group, and write the evidence artifact production/qa/evidence/[story-slug]-evidence.md from .claude/docs/templates/test-evidence.md, carrying the sign-off table intact and referencing the screenshots. If no screenshot was saved, name that story in the Phase 5 summary as missing its retained evidence rather than writing a doc that implies one.

This is not optional bookkeeping — it is the artifact the next skill gates on. /story-done globs production/qa/evidence/ for Visual/Feel and UI stories and reads the sign-off table; /story-readiness, /test-evidence-review and gate-release read the same directory. Write anywhere else and a story can pass a full manual QA cycle here, then be told by /story-done that no visual evidence exists. Visual/Feel and UI gates are BLOCKING by default, so that is a deadlock — QA passed, story cannot close. It is a merely confusing flag only where testing.strict.ui or .visual has been explicitly set to false.

Leave the sign-off rows unchecked unless the sign-off actually happened in this session. An evidence file with pre-ticked approvals is worse than none: it converts a missing signature into a recorded one.

Bug report naming: BUG-[NNNN].md, numbered the way /bug-report numbers them — the highest ID in production/qa/bugs/ plus one, zero-padded to four digits — so /bug-report verify and close can find it by its ID.

After collecting all results, summarize:

• Stories PASS: [count]
• Stories PASS WITH NOTES: [count]
• Stories FAIL: [count] — bugs filed: [IDs]
• Stories BLOCKED: [count]

Phase 6: QA Sign-Off Report

Spawn qa-lead via Agent to draft the sign-off report using all results from Phases 2–5. Here the return contract is the report text in its reply, not a file: the orchestrator writes the sign-off after the ask at the end of this phase, so the qa-lead writes nothing.

Brief the qa-lead with the evidence and the verdict rules below — never a verdict. Pass the strategy table, the smoke check verdict and its source, each story's result, the bugs filed in Phase 5 and the Open bugs in scope from Phase 1, and the verdict rules below, verbatim. Do not name a verdict, pre-fill the ### Verdict: line, or say which fact decides it: the qa-lead applies the rules to the evidence. Then check its verdict against the same rules before asking to write; if they disagree, show both and ask — never silently substitute your own.

The sign-off report format:

## QA Sign-Off Report: [Sprint/Feature]
**Date**: [date]

### Test Coverage Summary
| Story | Type | Auto Test | Manual QA | Result |
|-------|------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| [title] | Logic | PASS | — | PASS |
| [title] | Logic | WAIVED (qa.level: minimal) | PASS — criteria walked | PASS |
| [title] | Visual | — | PASS | PASS |
| [title] | Integration | — | BLOCKED | BLOCKED — [reason]; no executed evidence |

### Bugs Found
| ID | Story | Severity | Status |
|----|-------|----------|--------|
| BUG-0001 | [story] | S2 | Open |

[every open bug in scope — those Phase 1 found on file and those filed in Phase 5]

### Verdict: NOT ASSESSED / APPROVED / APPROVED WITH CONDITIONS / NOT APPROVED

**Conditions** (if any): [list what must be fixed before the build advances]

### Next Step
[guidance based on verdict]

Every story in scope gets a Test Coverage Summary row — BLOCKED and unexecuted stories included, with the reason in Result — so a story that never ran cannot drop out of the report.

Verdict rules:

Order. Check NOT APPROVED first: any open S1/S2 bug in scope — one already on file (Phase 1) as much as one filed in Phase 5 — or a story that FAILs without a documented workaround, makes the verdict NOT APPROVED whatever else went unexecuted — a known failure outranks an unknown, and demoting it to NOT ASSESSED would bury it (.claude/rules/skill-authoring.md, obligation 1).

Then the precondition. APPROVED and APPROVED WITH CONDITIONS both require that every story in scope produced executed evidence — a test that ran, or a manual case that was walked. At qa.level: minimal a Logic, Integration or Config/Data story's acceptance-criteria walk is its executed evidence: its tests are WAIVED, not missing. If any story is BLOCKED, unexecuted, or has no evidence, the verdict is NOT ASSESSED, not either kind of APPROVED. A smoke check that was UNKNOWN (no report found) or NOT ASSESSED in Phase 2 also makes it NOT ASSESSED: the build's health was never checked.

• NOT ASSESSED — NO EVIDENCE: One or more stories produced no executed evidence (BLOCKED, tests not written at qa.level standard/full, cases not walked, or smoke check FAIL / UNKNOWN / NOT ASSESSED). This is not a pass and not a fail; it means QA did not happen. Say which stories and why.
• APPROVED: All stories PASS or PASS WITH NOTES; no S1/S2 bugs open
• APPROVED WITH CONDITIONS: S3/S4 bugs open, or PASS WITH NOTES issues documented; no S1/S2 bugs
• NOT APPROVED: Any S1/S2 bugs open; or stories FAIL without documented workaround

Why the precondition exists. The three rules below it assume every story resolves to PASS or FAIL. A sprint where nothing was executed trips none of the NOT APPROVED conditions and vacuously satisfies "no S1/S2 bugs open" — because zero executed tests means zero observed failures. Read literally, and without this precondition, the rules let a completely untested build reach APPROVED — a qa-lead reaching NOT APPROVED on intent would find the letter of the rules did not support it. A sign-off asserts verified quality; without this precondition the rules cannot tell "verified good" from "never looked".

Next step guidance by verdict:

• NOT ASSESSED: "QA did not run to completion. Produce the missing evidence — write the Logic tests (at qa.level standard/full) or walk the waived stories' acceptance criteria (at minimal), walk the manual cases, run /smoke-check — then re-run /team-qa. Do not advance the build on this verdict."
• APPROVED: "Build is ready for the next phase. Run /gate-check to validate advancement."
• APPROVED WITH CONDITIONS: "Resolve conditions before advancing. S3/S4 bugs may be deferred to polish."
• NOT APPROVED: "Resolve S1/S2 bugs and re-run /team-qa or targeted manual QA before advancing."

Ask: "May I write this QA sign-off report to production/qa/qa-signoff-[sprint]-[date].md?"

Write only after receiving approval.

Error Recovery Protocol

First, verify the artifact. If the return contract named a path, check the path exists before treating the phase as done — a named artifact that is not on disk is a failed phase, however fluent the response reads. An agent can burn a full phase and return a plausible preamble having written nothing, which is neither BLOCKED nor an error nor "cannot complete", so the trigger below never fires. Resume it naming the unmet contract; the context is usually still there.

If any spawned agent returns BLOCKED, errors, or cannot complete: surface it immediately, don't proceed past a dependency it blocks, and always produce a partial report. Full procedure: .claude/docs/error-recovery-protocol.md.

Common blockers:

• Input file missing (story not found, GDD absent) → redirect to the skill that creates it
• ADR status is Proposed → do not implement; once it is decided, accept it with /architecture-decision accept ADR-NNNN
• Scope too large → split into two stories via /create-stories
• Conflicting instructions between ADR and story → surface the conflict, do not guess

Output

A summary covering: stories in scope, smoke check result, manual QA results, bugs filed (with IDs and severities), and the final APPROVED / APPROVED WITH CONDITIONS / NOT APPROVED / NOT ASSESSED verdict.

Verdict: COMPLETE — QA cycle finished. Verdict: BLOCKED — smoke check failed or critical blocker prevented cycle completion; partial report produced.

Session State Update

After the final phase completes (sign-off report written or BLOCKED verdict reached), silently append to production/session-state/active.md:

<!-- QA RUN: [date] | Sprint: [sprint identifier or "ad-hoc"] | Verdict: [APPROVED/APPROVED WITH CONDITIONS/NOT APPROVED/NOT ASSESSED/BLOCKED] | Report: production/qa/qa-signoff-[sprint]-[date].md -->