Mutation testing

Breaks the code on purpose to find out whether the suite notices — the only honest measure of test quality.

Installation

$ npx skills add trailofbits/skills

The CLI's unit is the repository, so this installs everything in trailofbits/skills, not mutation-testing alone. It writes into whichever agent directories it finds — Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, Windsurf, Zed.

Summary

Breaks the code on purpose to find out whether the suite notices — the only honest measure of test quality.

  • Reach for it when coverage is high, confidence is not, and you suspect the tests assert very little.
  • Sits in Test — proving the change does what it claims — and finding the assertions that were never written.
  • Stack-agnostic — nothing in it assumes a particular language or framework.
  • Published by Trail of Bits. Well regarded, but not the vendor of the thing it covers.
  • Installing pulls the whole trailofbits/skills repository: this catalogue lists 12 other entries from it, and the repo may hold more.

Where it sits in delivery

TestProving the change does what it claims — and finding the assertions that were never written.Everything in Test

The skill itself

The full text lives with its publisher and changes when they change it. Read it there rather than here — a mirrored copy of somebody else's procedure goes stale silently, and this page would have no way of telling you.

Related

More in Test