Lessons / Part 10. Coding agents, commands and skills
70 Ask for the count of what was checked
A scripted sweep with case counts replaces an agent's word that something looks fine.
What people usually ask
Check that the report template renders correctly at every page size.
What comes back
“Checked, and it looks good at all sizes”, after one render at the default size, or none.
Ask this instead
Write check_render.py that renders template.html to PDF for every case in cases.csv: page size A4, Letter and A3, each portrait and landscape, each at text scale 100 and 125 percent. For each case record size, orientation, scale, page count and whether any element overflowed the page box. Save the table as checks/render_<date>.csv.
Report: the number of cases run, the number that failed, and each failed case with the element that overflowed. Anything that could not be checked from where you ran (a font not installed, no PDF engine) is reported as not checked, never as passed. Fix nothing in this pass.
Attach: Nothing.
Why it works: a count of cases run and a count of failures can be compared with the number of cases asked for, and a sentence cannot.
Drafted with Fable 5.1 from my notes; chosen and edited by me.