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Agent skill

Routine Useless Test Pruner

by bex-co in bex-co/beancount-io

Autonomous maintenance routine that finds tests that cannot fail — no real assertions, tautologies that assert a mock returns what it was told, mock-everything tests that never touch the unit —…

MITAuto-check passedTesting & QA

Install Routine Useless Test Pruner

skills CLI
$ npx skills add bex-co/beancount-io --skill routine-useless-test-pruner -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install bex-co/beancount-io routine-useless-test-pruner --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bex-co/beancount-io.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/.agents/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner .claude/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
routine-useless-test-pruner
GitHub stars
295
Token cost
~781 tokens
SKILL.md length
360 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
27
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Autonomous maintenance routine that finds tests that cannot fail — no real assertions, tautologies that assert a mock returns what it was told, mock-everything tests that never touch the unit —…

  • Works in 6 steps: Scope → Discover → Prove it — mechanically, every time → …
  • Explicitly invokes /routine-useless-test-pruner
  • SKILL.md covers Contract, Workflow, What NOT to do and Arguments
  • Calls git

What it does

Routine Useless Test Pruner is an agent skill from bex-co/beancount-io. Autonomous maintenance routine that finds tests that cannot fail — no real assertions, tautologies that assert a mock returns what it was told, mock-everything tests that never touch the unit — proves it mechanically by breaking the covered behavior and watching the test stay green, deletes them, and ships via /ship. Use only when the user explicitly invokes /routine-useless-test-pruner or asks to prune useless/worthless tests. SKIP for tests that fail intermittently (routine-flaky-test-fixer), tests of code…

Its SKILL.md is about 780 tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Testing & QA, covering Failing and flaky tests. The repository describes itself as: 💰 Double-entry bookkeeping made easy — plain-text accounting for humans and AI agents. Polished iOS & Android app built with React Native + Expo. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Explicitly invokes /routine-useless-test-pruner
  • Asks to prune useless/worthless tests
  • Is delete tests that cant fail

Example prompts

  • “delete tests that can”
  • “/routine-useless-test-pruner”

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Scope
  2. Discover
  3. Prove it — mechanically, every time
  4. Fix
  5. Verify
  6. Ship

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 2103ca1. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

    • git

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md. Its commands use git, which can reach the network depending on how they are called.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Routine Useless Test Pruner loads about 781 tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 166 tokens; SKILL.md has 360 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~166
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~781

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from bex-co/beancount-io at commit 2103ca1, republished under its MIT licence (© bex-co). 360 words, ~781 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
routine-useless-test-pruner
description
Autonomous maintenance routine that finds tests that cannot fail — no real assertions, tautologies that assert a mock returns what it was told, mock-everything tests that never touch the unit — proves it mechanically by breaking the covered behavior and watching the test stay green, deletes them, and ships via /ship. Use only when the user explicitly invokes /routine-useless-test-pruner or asks to prune useless/worthless tests. SKIP for tests that fail intermittently (routine-flaky-test-fixer), tests of code being deleted (they travel with their code), and slow-but-valid tests. The core trigger is "delete tests that can't fail".

Task: Delete tests that cannot fail

Usage: /routine-useless-test-pruner [package-or-path]

Find tests that pass no matter what the code does, prove it by sabotaging the covered behavior and watching them stay green, delete them, and ship via /ship.

Contract

Read .agents/skills/routine-shared/contract.md first — preconditions, scope resolution, verify gates, ship protocol, budget, universal STOPs. Floor even without it: never ship red; one finding per ship; anything in a DO_NOT_DO.md is a hard STOP.

Workflow

1. Scope

Resolve scope per the contract. Test roots: mobile/src/__tests__/ (run by the jest-lite runner), dashboard and backend __tests__/ beside features, cli's pytest suite.

2. Discover

Read test files for the shapes that can't fail:

  • No meaningful assertion (only "doesn't throw" on code that can't throw).
  • Tautologies — asserting a mock returns the value the test just told it to return.
  • Mock-everything tests where the unit under test is itself mocked away.
  • Exact or near-exact duplicates of a neighboring test.
3. Prove it — mechanically, every time

For each candidate: temporarily break the behavior the test claims to cover (invert the condition, corrupt the return value), run the test, and observe it still green. Then revert the sabotage immediately. A test that went red is a real test — leave it and move on. Reading alone is never proof.

Show full SKILL.md (153 more words)Show less
4. Fix

Default: delete the test. Replace it with a real assertion only when the intended behavior is unambiguous from the test's own name/context and the replacement is a few lines — otherwise deletion is the honest change.

5. Verify
  • git diff must show only test changes — every sabotage fully reverted. This check is part of the finding, not cleanup; a shipped sabotage is the worst outcome this routine has.
  • Owning package's full gate green.
6. Ship

Compose /ship for this one pruning. Loop within budget.

What NOT to do

  • Never delete a test that went red under sabotage, however ugly it looks.
  • Never prune a test for being slow, intermittent (routine-flaky-test-fixer), or attached to code some other routine is deleting.
  • Never leave sabotage in the tree — verify the revert with git diff before staging, every time.
  • Don't batch prunings across files into one ship; each finding stays reviewable on its own.

Arguments

$ARGUMENTS

© bex-co, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in .agents/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner of bex-co/beancount-io.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 2103ca1

Compare with similar skills

Routine Useless Test Pruner next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Routine Useless Test Pruner compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Routine Useless Test Pruner this skillbex-co/beancount-io295—~781Automated safety check: PassMIT
Swig Testswig/swig6.3k—~2.3kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Triage CI FailureDataDog/datadog-agent3.8k—~2.3kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Dynamo Jira TicketDynamoDS/Dynamo2k—~1.1kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Fix Ready PRsfastrepl/anarlog9.5k—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Trx Analysismicrosoft/vstest969—~1.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Categories

Questions about Routine Useless Test Pruner

What does Routine Useless Test Pruner do?

Autonomous maintenance routine that finds tests that cannot fail — no real assertions, tautologies that assert a mock returns what it was told, mock-everything tests that never touch the unit —…. Routine Useless Test Pruner is an agent skill from bex-co/beancount-io. Autonomous maintenance routine that finds tests that cannot fail — no real assertions, tautologies that assert a mock returns what it was told, mock-everything tests that never touch the unit — proves it mechanically by breaking the covered behavior and watching the test stay green, deletes them, and ships via /ship.

When should I use Routine Useless Test Pruner?

Routine Useless Test Pruner fits situations like: explicitly invokes /routine-useless-test-pruner; asks to prune useless/worthless tests; is delete tests that cant fail.

How do I install Routine Useless Test Pruner in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add bex-co/beancount-io --skill routine-useless-test-pruner -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (.agents/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner in bex-co/beancount-io) into .claude/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Routine Useless Test Pruner in Codex?

Run `npx skills add bex-co/beancount-io --skill routine-useless-test-pruner -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (.agents/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner in bex-co/beancount-io) into .agents/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Routine Useless Test Pruner in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add bex-co/beancount-io --skill routine-useless-test-pruner -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner, .gemini/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner, .github/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner and .opencode/skills/routine-useless-test-pruner in your project.

What does Routine Useless Test Pruner need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Routine Useless Test Pruner needs the command-line tools its instructions call (git).

Does Routine Useless Test Pruner access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Its commands use git, which can reach the network depending on how they are called. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Routine Useless Test Pruner safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Routine Useless Test Pruner use?

Routine Useless Test Pruner is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Routine Useless Test Pruner use?

About 781 tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 3.1k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Routine Useless Test Pruner?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Routine Useless Test Pruner: Swig Test (swig/swig, 6.3k stars), Triage CI Failure (DataDog/datadog-agent, 3.8k stars), Dynamo Jira Ticket (DynamoDS/Dynamo, 2k stars) and Fix Ready PRs (fastrepl/anarlog, 9.5k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Routine Useless Test Pruner?

bex-co (a GitHub organization) maintains it in bex-co/beancount-io, which has 295 GitHub stars. The repository holds 27 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 7, 2026.

Source: bex-co/beancount-io on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.