Exploratory QA Heuristic Pass

What it does

Exploratory QA Heuristic Pass is a Cursor skill: a SKILL.md playbook that AgenticKit installs at .cursor/skills/exploratory-qa. Cursor's agent loads it when the task matches the skill description, instead of stuffing the same rules into every chat.

Severity-ranked findings from using the product like a stranger. Playwright comes after the human pass.

New-user click-through before writing more tests. The file is domain knowledge, not a slash macro. You do not type it. The agent reads it when the job is exploratory qa.

Why it exists

Default Cursor has no memory of how your team ships code, schema, and tests. Founders paste the same conventions into chat, then watch the model drift on the next turn. This skill exists so those conventions live on disk and load only when relevant.

It ships in the Engineering Kit. It is wired to the Exploratory QA Specialist (qa-explorer) and Test Automation Engineer (test-automator) agents. It is wired to the /qa-pass: Exploratory QA Pass and /e2e-suite: Playwright End-to-End Test Suite Generator commands. That graph is the point: the skill is the standard, the agent is the role, the command is the trigger.

When to use it

• Use Exploratory QA Heuristic Pass when the work is specifically about new-user click-through before writing more tests.
• Load it before a long session that will touch this surface more than once. A one-line edit does not need the full playbook.
• Use it on production SaaS work (multi-tenant apps, paid features, anything that will be reviewed) rather than a throwaway prototype.

When not to use it

• Do not treat the skill as a replacement for a slash command. Skills teach. Commands run a pipeline.
• Do not paste the whole SKILL.md into chat. If Cursor is not loading it, fix the description or invoke the matching command.
• Do not use it as a generic 'write better code' rule. Scope is this domain only.

Example workflow

1. Install the Engineering Kit so .cursor/skills/exploratory-qa lands in the repo.
2. Open a new Cursor agent chat pointed at the files this skill governs.
3. Ask the Exploratory QA Specialist (qa-explorer) to read the skill, or run /qa-pass: Exploratory QA Pass.
4. Review the first artifact against the practices below. If it violates one, stop and correct the file. Do not prompt 'just finish it'.
5. Commit the skill-guided files with the rest of the slice so the next session inherits the same standard.

Example usage

Example prompt: "Read .cursor/skills/exploratory-qa and apply it to this change. Do not invent extra conventions."

Or trigger the pipeline: /qa-pass: Exploratory QA Pass. That command is written to load this skill.

Check the output against: Walk the flow as a first-time user

Example output

• The skill itself does not write a single output file. It changes what the agent is allowed to produce in code, schema, and tests.
• When you run /qa-pass: Exploratory QA Pass, expect repo files plus notes under docs/, not a chat-only answer.

Best practices

• Walk the flow as a first-time user
• Score P0–P3 with repro steps
• Log confusions that are not bugs
• Automate only after P0 exists

Common mistakes

• Ignoring "Walk the flow as a first-time user" and hoping a later prompt will clean it up.
• Copying the skill into .cursor/rules as always-on. That burns context and fights Cursor's load-on-match design.
• Running two overlapping skills that contradict each other in the same turn.
• Letting the agent skip tests or types because 'the skill is about architecture'.