Hardware Test and Triage
Public Made by Adomby adom
Agent skill: bench methodology for hardware test campaigns — procedure hardening, failure-signature triage, discriminating tests, and the document ledger. Distilled from the Control Panel V2.0.1 Test 0.0 campaign.
Contents
README
markdownHardware Test and Triage
An AI agent skill carrying the bench methodology proven during the Control Panel: Workcell + Control Panel: Scaffold Test 0.0 campaign — a multi-day CM5-carrier / RP2350 bring-up that root-caused two design errata, one silicon corner case, and a dozen procedure defects.
The theme throughout: evidence beats recall, discriminating tests beat theories, and the observation channel is a suspect until proven.
What the skill covers
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| 1. The document ledger | Frozen procedure → staging editor → final-changes ledger, with an explicit promotion gate |
| 2. Verify before trusting | Netlist-vs-datasheet pin checks, proven-reference cross-checks, datasheet edge cases |
| 3. Failure-signature reading | A table of bench signatures and what each actually means |
| 4. Discriminating tests | The one measurement that splits the hypothesis space |
| 5. The observation channel is a suspect | Ping false-fails, enumeration latency, DMM impedance, scope bandwidth discipline |
| 6. Bench safety rules | Never optimize a working system mid-campaign; every ON gets an OFF; end-state discipline |
| 7. Writing procedure steps | Self-contained steps, string-match pass criteria, explicit concurrency, bench-reference values |
| 8. Test firmware patterns | SSO stress vs walking-1, heartbeat, PIO echo, kit discipline |
| 9. Root-cause honesty | Partitioning failures, full reverts, owning wrong calls |
| 10. Run conclusion | The evidence merge: procedure Rev N+1 + a paired evidence appendix |
Install
adom-wiki pkg install adom/hardware-test-and-triage
SKILL.md at the repo root is the skill; the install carries no other
payload.
Provenance
Distilled 2026-08 from the Test 0.0 campaign (board test0). The campaign's
own outputs — Test Procedure Rev 1.0 and the Evidence Appendix — are release
assets on the Control Panel: Workcell page.