[TEST-PRUNING] 2124 prunable test candidates detected — test suite has significant dead weight

[akaszubski]

Problem

The test lifecycle health dashboard reports 2124 prunable candidates out of 3587 total findings. This far exceeds the [TEST-PRUNING] threshold of 20 candidates and indicates the test suite has accumulated substantial dead weight that is slowing CI and obscuring signal.

Repo: autonomous-dev
Session: 2026-04-08

Evidence

Test Health Dashboard

Total findings: 3587
Prunable candidates: 2124      <- threshold: >20
Untraced tests: 140
Orphaned pairs: 301
Untested issues: 7
Tier balance: healthy

Tier Distribution:
  T0: 71 tests
  T1: 94 tests
  T2: 32 tests
  T3: 282 tests
  unknown: 98 tests

2124 prunable candidates represents 59% of total findings. The 301 orphaned pairs suggest a large class of tests whose corresponding implementation was removed or refactored without cleaning up the associated tests. The 140 untraced tests (not linked to issues) compounds the problem — tests with no traceability cannot be triaged efficiently.

Suggested Fix

1. Run TestLifecycleManager.analyze() with verbose output to get the specific prunable candidates and their reasons
2. Batch-delete or mark-skip all orphaned pairs that reference removed code paths
3. Add issue traceability markers to the 140 untraced tests (or delete if they duplicate coverage)
4. Consider adding a CI gate that fails if prunable candidates exceed 100 (not 20 — that threshold is too tight for a repo of this scale, but the current 2124 number is clearly out of control)

Plugin Version: 3.50.0 (9760186)

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Filed automatically by continuous-improvement-analyst

[akaszubski]

Follow-up from pipeline run 20260410-102602 (Issue #739 — CIA cross-repo finding routing):

Test health dashboard re-run shows 2107 prunable candidates (previously 2124). Count is still well above the 20-candidate threshold.

Session: 2026-04-10
Feature: CIA cross-repo finding routing (#739)
Tier distribution: healthy (T0=71, T1=94, T2=32, T3=290)
Untraced tests: 142

No new pruning action taken this run. Issue remains open and unresolved.

[akaszubski]

Tooling verified in commit 20a7339 — test_lifecycle_manager.py and /sweep --tests are wired and tested. The 2124 prunable candidates still need manual triage via /sweep --tests in a dedicated session. Keeping open.

[akaszubski]

Update — 2026-04-10 batch session

Prunable candidate count has grown from 2124 → 2954 (+830 since last report). This batch added 5 issues (#930, #931, #932, #952, #948) which likely contributed test scaffolding without pruning stale tests.

The issue is worsening rather than improving. Consider scheduling a dedicated test pruning pass.

Filed by continuous-improvement-analyst

[akaszubski]

Updated count: 2965 prunable candidates (was 2124)

Date: 2026-04-10 | Repo: spektiv

Test lifecycle manager reports 2965 prunable candidates (up from 2124 in previous report, +841).

Other metrics:

• Untraced tests: 181 / 843 total = 21.5% (below 50% threshold)
• T0 acceptance tests: 27 (healthy)
• T1 tests: 67
• T3 tests: 714
• Tier balance: healthy

The prunable candidate count continues to grow with each batch (this batch processed 9 --fix issues). The dead weight is accumulating faster than it's being cleared.

Filed automatically by continuous-improvement-analyst