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Latest Lights Out · Part 2 / 3 Lights Out, Part 2: Earning Confidence

Kata Catalog

Practice TDD with a curated set of real-world katas, each with clear requirements and test cases.

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Guides & References

Learn best practices, naming conventions, and advanced TDD techniques from industry experts.

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Interactive Learning

Discover the TDD Gears model and learn how to apply TDD principles in real-world scenarios.

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Why TDD Matters More in the AI Era

The bar for "good tests" just moved. Agents made it non-optional.

  • Confidence is an artifact, not a feeling. You do not develop trust in an unattended loop by watching it. You build trust by naming the regressions it can no longer produce.
  • The 2026-05 incident is the scar this post carries. A malformed post landed on main as a base64 blob, broke builds for two weeks, and produced a double-publish before the fault surfaced. Name the incident; do not sand it down.
  • Structural validation gates are the defense. A schema check that refuses a post whose frontmatter fails to parse, whose slug does not match its filename, whose pubDate is not a valid future Monday. Fails closed. Zero manual work per PR.
  • Confidence is cumulative and attributable. Every named test is a claim about a failure mode the pipeline can no longer produce. Add them faster than the pipeline invents new failure modes and the trust surface grows.

Read the argument: Lights Out, Part 2: Earning Confidence

The Bar Moved

Old bar

Tests exist and pass. Good enough for humans with context.

New bar

Scenario names · builders · domain types · ubiquitous language. The test suite is the interface agents operate against.

TDD Gears

Shift gears based on context, not habit

TDD Gears model showing Low, Medium, High, and Reverse gears for test-driven development

Low Gear

New territory. Build context. Small steps. Learn the shape of the problem before solving it.

Medium Gear

Patterns emerge. Apply design principles. Let the tests guide you toward better abstractions.

High Gear

Known patterns. Follow existing architecture. Move fast because the structure is already proven.

Reverse Gear

Wrong direction. Back up. Delete the test. Try a different approach. This isn't failure — it's steering.