Testing Load Balancers

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Performing specialized testing
• With phrases like test load balancer
• Validate failover
• Check traffic distribution

Example prompts

• “test load balancer”
• “validate failover”
• “check traffic distribution”
• “/testing-load-balancers”

Requirements

• Docker
• Compatibility (from SKILL.md): Designed for Claude Code
• Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob, Bash(test:loadbalancer-*)

Workflow steps

7 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Verify basic load balancer connectivity
2. 2Test traffic distribution algorithm
3. 3Validate health check behavior
4. 4Test failover scenarios
5. 5Validate session persistence (sticky sessions)
6. 6Test connection draining
7. 7Document all results with request/response evidence and timing data.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit cfae287. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:

  • Read
  • Write
  • Edit
  • Grep
  • Glob
  • Bash(test:loadbalancer-*)

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Ships 1 file in scripts/, which the agent can run.

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • curl
  • docker
  • jq

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

• Network

  Hosts in commands or code, which the agent is likely to contact:

  • lb.test.com

  Also links to:

  • docs.nginx.com
  • haproxy.org
  • docs.aws.amazon.com
  • grafana.com
  • github.com

  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.

• Compatibility

  Designed for Claude Code

  From compatibility in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

Context cost

Testing Load Balancers loads about 1.6k tokens when it runs, and up to ~1.6k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 59 tokens; SKILL.md has 549 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~59

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.6k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~1.6k

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

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); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace at commit cfae287, republished under its MIT licence (© jeremylongshore). 549 words, ~1,561 tokens.

name

testing-load-balancers

description

Validate load balancer behavior, failover, and traffic distribution. Use when performing specialized testing. Trigger with phrases like "test load balancer", "validate failover", or "check traffic distribution".

allowed-tools

Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob, Bash(test:loadbalancer-*)

compatibility

Designed for Claude Code

version

1.21.0

author

Jeremy Longshore <jeremy@intentsolutions.io>

license

MIT

tags

testing, testing-load

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
declare -A counts
for i in $(seq 1 100); do
  backend=$(curl -s -H "Host: app.test.com" http://lb.test.com/health \
    | jq -r '.hostname')
  counts[$backend]=$(( ${counts[$backend]:-0} + 1 ))
done
echo "Traffic distribution:"
for backend in "${!counts[@]}"; do
  echo "  $backend: ${counts[$backend]} requests"
done

set -euo pipefail
# 1. Verify both backends serve traffic
curl -s http://lb.test.com/health  # Backend A
curl -s http://lb.test.com/health  # Backend B

# 2. Stop Backend A
docker stop backend-a

# 3. Verify all traffic goes to Backend B (no errors)
for i in $(seq 1 10); do
  curl -sf http://lb.test.com/health || echo "FAIL: request $i"
done

# 4. Restart Backend A and verify it rejoins
docker start backend-a
sleep 10  # Wait for health check interval
curl -s http://lb.test.com/health  # Should see Backend A again

import http from 'k6/http';
import { check } from 'k6';

export const options = { vus: 50, duration: '30s' };

export default function () {
  const res = http.get('http://lb.test.com/api/data');
  check(res, {
    'status is 200': (r) => r.status === 200,  # HTTP 200 OK
    'response time < 500ms': (r) => r.timings.duration < 500,  # HTTP 500 Internal Server Error
  });
}

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

Files

SKILL.md and 6 other files (scripts, references, assets) in skills/.curated/testing-load-balancers of jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace.

• SKILL.md
• assets/README.md
• assets/example_config.conf
• assets/report_template.html
• assets/test_template.json
• references/README.md
• scripts/README.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit cfae287