Tests do not prove wisdom. They preserve lessons.
A strong suite records what the team learned from requirements and failures.
Interpretation
Tests are institutional memory in executable form. Each valuable case records a behavior worth protecting, often discovered through a failure that was expensive to understand. A suite becomes powerful when it preserves those lessons clearly, not when it maximizes an abstract coverage number.
Practice
- Name tests after the behavior they preserve.
- Keep regressions close to the layer that failed.
- Delete tests that assert implementation trivia.
Anti-pattern
Chasing 100% line coverage with assertions that cannot catch a defect.