Debugging Failures
Diagnose a failing Ginkgo suite as an agent, always run with --json-report into a...
Install
npx skills add onsi/ginkgo --skill debugging-failures -g -a claude-code -y- Repository
- onsi/ginkgo9.1k
- Category
- Testing
- Updated
- 26d ago
- License
- MIT
- Context cost
- Mediumabout 1,568 tokens
- Runs scripts
- No, instructions only
What it does
Diagnose a failing Ginkgo suite as an agent, always run with --json-report into a predictable temp/gitignored location, read the terminal verdict line, then use jq to extract structured failure details (name, message, file:line, panic value, captured logs). Covers the panicked-vs-failed trap, panic locations pointing into the Go runtime, parallel output interleaving, reproducing with --seed, and progress reports for hangs. Use when a suite failed and you need to know why. Also invokable as /ginkgo:debugging-failures.
Debugging Ginkgo failures (especially as an agent)
Ginkgo's terminal output is good for a human; for programmatic diagnosis, prefer a hybrid: terminal for the verdict, JSON + jq for the details. This is empirically the most reliable, lowest-token workflow. Docs: https://onsi.github.io/ginkgo/#reporting-and-profiling-suites.
The workflow: one run, JSON-first diagnosis
# One invocation gives you BOTH the human verdict on the terminal AND a structured report.
# --json-report does NOT suppress console output, so you don't pay for two runs.
ginkgo -r -p --no-color --json-report=report.json --output-dir=.ginkgo-report
- Read the terminal tail for the one-line verdict:
FAIL! -- 5 Passed | 6 Failed | 1 Pending | 1 Skipped. Cheap, immediate. - If there are failures, query the JSON with
jq(filters below) to get exactly the failing specs, stable, addressable, order-independent. - Clean up the report dir when done.
Why hybrid and not one or the other:
- Terminal-only is brittle to parse (free-form text) and, under
-p, interleaves failures in nondeterministic order. - JSON-only is wasteful if you dump it: the full
report.jsonis ~9× the tokens of the terminal output. Ajqfailures-only extraction is a fraction of either. The discipline is filter, don't dump.
