Claude Code Test Debugging Without The Context Overload

• Projects with large test suites become difficult to debug with Claude Code

• Easy to hit session context limits with dozens or hundreds of tests

• Risk of overinflated progress reporting

• Claude may even provide inaccurate test results

• Context confusion leads to unreliable fixes

• Difficult to track which tests actually pass

Claude can give an overinflated sense of progress or even lie about test results

• Natural limitation of context window

• Doesn't need solving at model level

• Needs engineered guardrails at IDE/agent level

• Simple CLI queueing tool called tfq

• Available on npm

• Manages test failures systematically

• Prevents context overload

• Maintains focus on individual tests

• Structured approach to debugging

• Test Failure Queue - CLI tool for managing failed tests

• Runs your entire test suite

• Queues up all failing tests

• Feeds each test individually to Claude Code

• Each test gets its own headless Claude session

• Includes failure messages, tracebacks, and imports

• Per-test context management - keeps context focused

• Faster test fixes - no wasted time on context switching

• Accurate progress - no confusion about which tests pass

• Reliable results - reduces false positives

• Systematic approach - predictable workflow

• Better debugging - isolated test environments

Example: JavaScript calculator app

Step 1: Run your test suite with tfq

3 tests failed:

• src/utils/calculator.test.js

• src/api/auth.test.js

• src/components/Button.test.js

• --auto-detect - Automatically detects your language and test framework

• --auto-add - Automatically adds failures to tfq queue

• Supports JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Ruby

• Check your queued failing tests

• Simple tfq list command

• Shows all tests in queue

• clear - Remove tests from queue

• resolve - Mark tests as resolved

• group - Organize related tests

• Full documentation on GitHub

• Visit the repository

• Open source and contributions welcome

• Step 2: Automated test fixing

• Let Claude Code handle repairs

• Fully automated workflow

• tfq automatically integrates with Claude Code

• Creates config file on initialization

• Ports over all Claude Code options

• Enables headless mode for automated fixes

• No manual intervention required

• Runs in background seamlessly

• maxIterations: 10 - Max attempts per test

• testTimeout: 300000 - 5 minute timeout

• Fully configurable for your needs

• Uses {testFilePath} placeholder

• Instructs Claude to debug errors one at a time

• Verifies fixes by re-running tests

• dangerouslySkipPermissions: true

• allowedTools: ["Edit", "Read", "Write"]

• Full customization like command line

• {testFilePath} resolves automatically

• Provides absolute path to next failed test

• No manual path configuration needed

• The tfq fix-next command

• Performs automated steps

• Sequential test processing

1. Dequeues next failed test from queue 2. Provides absolute path to Claude with your config 3. Runs Claude Code in headless mode

4. Re-tests after Claude's fix 5. Re-queues if test still fails 6. Continues to next test in queue

• Fix all tests sequentially

• Single command operation

• Automated batch processing

• Simple but effective - No magic, just good engineering

• Structured approach - Manages context systematically

• Ordered processing - One test at a time

• Better results - More reliable test fixes

• Time saver - Reduces debugging time significantly

• Try it out - npm install -g tfq