How to use the Quinn QA Tester agent skill

What is an agent skill and what does Quinn make the agent do?

An agent skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file that gives an AI agent a role, a method and rules to follow when a matching request comes up. Quinn is the QA Tester role in the agentic-awesome-skills collection.

Quinn works from the requirements it is given. It maps every user story and acceptance criterion to at least one test, maps each Definition of Done to a verifiable test, and chooses the test type for each scenario: unit, integration, end-to-end or contract. Its report lists passing and failing tests, line and branch coverage it measured, and remaining uncertainty. It does not invent coverage numbers and does not treat passing tests as proof of correctness.

How do you install the Quinn skill?

There are two routes. The first is to download the Quinn ZIP from this page and unzip it into your personal skills folder, ~/.claude/skills/, or into a project's .claude/skills/ folder if you want the skill to apply only to that repository.

The second is to upload the ZIP in the Claude apps under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

• Personal install: unzip into ~/.claude/skills/
• Project install: unzip into the project's .claude/skills/ folder
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills, then upload the ZIP

How do you trigger Quinn with a natural request?

You do not need a special command. Ask for testing work that verifies requirements, and the agent should pick up the skill. The skill's own scope is selecting, writing or running tests that verify actual requirements and regressions, then reporting observed coverage and failures.

Name the requirements source when you have one. Quinn is designed to work from acceptance criteria, so pointing it at your user stories or spec makes its output far more useful.

• Write tests for the acceptance criteria in docs/requirements.md and report what is not covered.
• Review whether our existing test suite actually covers the signup requirements.
• Add edge-case tests for pagination and empty inputs in the orders API, then give me a coverage report.

What does a Quinn report look like?

Quinn produces a structured report to the main agent. It starts with a test summary (total, passing, failing, skipped) and coverage for lines, branches and any module below 80% line coverage. Results are grouped by layer, followed by acceptance criteria coverage, Definition of Done verification and findings that need code changes.

Each failing test is listed with the exact assertion and the actual versus expected values. Findings come with a failing test rather than an opinion.

• Test summary with passing, failing and skipped counts
• Coverage: lines, branches, modules below 80%
• Results by layer: unit, integration, E2E
• Acceptance criteria and Definition of Done checks
• Findings with severity, failing test and recommended fix

What do you need before you start?

The skill itself names no test framework. It expects the repository's own test tooling, appropriate to your project, to be in place. The best results come when you also have written requirements or acceptance criteria, because the method maps tests to them. Projects with no requirements are a poor fit for this approach.

The skill runs no scripts and makes no network calls, according to its listing.

• Test tooling already set up in the repository
• Requirements or acceptance criteria to test against
• Isolated fixtures or approved test environments for risky flows

What are the safety notes?

Quinn warns to use isolated fixtures or approved test environments for destructive, payment, account and external-message flows. Do not point generated tests at live systems for those flows.

Keep private data and secrets out of reports. Skipped, absent or non-executed tests count as unverified, and the report should say so rather than inventing coverage. Always verify generated code before it reaches production.

• Never run destructive, payment, account or external-message tests against live systems
• Use approved fixtures for those flows
• Keep secrets and private data out of the report

What tips help you get better results?

Give Quinn the requirements first, then ask for tests. Expect it to skip style and lint checks, because it does not handle them. If a module is hard to test, the skill flags that as a design problem for the developer to fix rather than working around it.

If you are reviewing an existing suite, ask specifically whether each acceptance criterion has a test that is passing. That question gets you a clearer answer than asking for general coverage.

• Supply acceptance criteria before asking for tests
• Ask for mapping from criteria to tests, not just a coverage number
• Use it for functional gaps, not linting
• Expect flags on code that is tightly coupled and hard to test