Prove Your Characterization Tests Can Fail: A Mutation Preflight for Messy Repos
This story is from 2026-11-05. It is preserved in the archive; the latest stories are on the live feed.
A passing characterization suite proves the code runs. It does not prove the suite can fail. Most messy-repo refactors die in that gap. You capture behavior, tests go green, then you make the smallest safe change and nothing notices a regression. This article adds one gate before the refactor: a mu…
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- 2026-11-05 17:16 · DEV Community — AI
Prove Your Characterization Tests Can Fail: A Mutation Preflight for Messy Repos