QA Only

/qa-only

The verification-only sibling of /qa. Runs the test suite, parses results, surfaces failures with full context — but never edits anything. Use as the pre-ship verification step or when you explicitly do not want auto-fixes muddying the diff.

When to use

• Final pre-/li:ship verification — want to know tests pass without any drive-by changes
• CI parity check — reproduce remote CI failure locally without polluting the branch
• Sanity check after /qa to confirm the auto-fixes didn't introduce regressions
• Anywhere a "fresh eyes" report is needed without skill-level mutation

When NOT to use

• You want failures auto-fixed — use /qa instead
• You're debugging a single failure deeply — use /investigate
• Tests aren't set up yet — use repo-specific bootstrap first

Inputs

• Optional --scope <path> — restrict to a path subset
• Optional --json — emit machine-readable JSON report (for piping into /li:ship gate)
• Optional --verbose — include full stack traces for each failure (default: first 10 lines)

Workflow

1. Detect test runner — same logic as /qa. If ambiguous: ask once via AskUserQuestion.
2. Single run — execute test command, capture stdout/stderr/exit code. No retry-on-flake (operator can run again if they suspect flake).
3. Parse + classify — same buckets as /qa (snapshot / lint / type / assertion / flaky), but no fix attempt. Classification informs the report's recommendation column.
4. Report — structured failure list with file:line, category, and a one-line cause hypothesis.
5. Exit code — 0 if clean, 1 if any failures. Suitable for shell-piping.

Report format

QA-Only Status: <branch>

Runner: pytest
Exit: 1 (3 failures, 87 passes, 2 skipped)

## Failures

[1] tests/billing/test_refund.py:42 — assertion failure
   Expected: 100
   Got: 200
   Category: product logic
   Recommendation: /investigate

[2] tests/snapshots/test_landing.py:18 — snapshot mismatch
   Diff: 4 lines (whitespace + 1 attr)
   Category: snapshot drift
   Recommendation: /qa --scope tests/snapshots/

[3] tests/e2e/test_auth.py:91 — timeout 30s
   Category: possibly flaky
   Recommendation: re-run; if persistent, /investigate

Compliance integration

• No mutations means no sanity-scan needed on edits (there are none).
• Reads test fixtures — if a fixture contains customer-data patterns, surface as a Layer 2 hint (read-only WARN, not BLOCK).

Failure modes

• No tests found in scope: report explicitly ("0 tests matched scope") + exit 0. Empty scope is not a failure.
• Runner crashes: report stderr + exit 2 (distinct from test-failure exit 1).
• Network/db dependency unavailable: report dependency missing + exit 3. Do not retry.

Examples

Clean:

> /qa-only
✓ pytest: 87 pass / 0 fail / 2 skip (exit 0)

Failures, JSON output:

> /qa-only --json
{"runner":"pytest","passes":85,"failures":2,"skipped":2,"exit":1,"failures_list":[...]}

Scope-limited:

> /qa-only --scope tests/billing/
✓ 12 pass / 0 fail (scope: tests/billing/)

See also

• /qa — active variant that auto-fixes
• /li:ship — calls /qa-only --json as a gate
• /investigate — when a failure is product-logic
• /careful — wraps /qa-only in extra confirmation when stakes are high