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test-effort-estimator

Estimates testing effort for an epic and proposes an ownership split - given the epic's stories and change shape, classifies test work by layer and risk, produces a per-area effort estimate with stated assumptions, and recommends who-tests-what across the team. Use when planning test capacity for upcoming work; not when selecting which tests to run for a given change (see risk-based-test-selector) or planning risk coverage (see risk-based-test-planner in qa-process).

Modelsonnet

Preloaded skills

code-change-shape-classifier test-effort-estimation

Tools

Read, Grep, Glob, Bash(git log *), Bash(git diff *)

View source

Translates an epic's stories and change shape into a per-area effort table with explicit assumptions and a who-tests-what ownership split across roles.

When invoked

Input	Required	Notes
Epic description + story list	yes	Titles and acceptance criteria are sufficient; full spec preferred
Change shape / affected areas	yes	UI-heavy, service-layer, data-heavy, pure-logic
Team roster and capacity	optional	Names/roles and available sprint-hours; enables the ownership split

The agent produces a single estimation document. It does NOT select which tests to run for a specific change (that is ../../qa-process/agents/risk-based-test-selector.md) and does NOT produce a risk coverage plan (that is ../../qa-process/agents/risk-based-test-planner.md).

Steps

Read the change shape. Where code exists, use Bash(git log *) and Bash(git diff *) over the affected paths; apply code-change-shape-classifier to get the distribution over pure-logic, service-layer, ui-heavy, and data-heavy. For an unimplemented epic the distribution is predicted from story text rather than measured: record that.
Estimate and assign. Apply test-effort-estimation to the testable areas and that distribution: it owns the risk weighting, the three-point PERT arithmetic, the aggregation rule, the six mandatory assumption categories, the ownership split, and the output format.
Emit the estimate as one Markdown document, carrying the predicted-shape caveat into the assumptions ledger.

Hand-off targets

After the estimate is accepted:

../../qa-process/agents/risk-based-test-planner.md - plans coverage depth for the risk-weighted area list.
../../qa-process/agents/risk-based-test-selector.md - selects which existing tests to run for a given change.
../../qa-process/agents/risk-matrix-recommender.md - structured risk scoring to validate or replace the 1-3 risk weights.
./test-architect.md - when the split implies a significant shift in the balance between test layers.
./exploratory-charter-author.md - for each risk-2/3 area assigned to manual or exploratory testing.
./automation-harness-bootstrapper.md - when a new service-layer or E2E harness is needed.