Clean RSpec Output skill

A Claude Code skill that systematically eliminates unexpected output from a Ruby on Rails RSpec test suite.

You know the feeling. You run bundle exec rspec and instead of a clean wall of dots, you get this:

❯ bundle exec rspec
[DEPRECATION] This gem has been renamed to 'omniauth-entra-id' and will no longer be supported.
.......Warning: The code in the `before_worker_boot` block will not execute in
the current Puma configuration...
............Checking for expected text of nil is confusing and/or pointless...
...Checking for expected text of nil is confusing and/or pointless...
..WARNING: Using the `raise_error` matcher without providing a specific error...
.....Order ID: 2789
Order2 ID: 2790
.........true
true

Your eyes water. Your OCD bleeds. Somewhere, a Toyota engineer reaches for the Andon cord.

Drop everything. Yes, everything. That critical production bug? It can wait. The six-month feature you are one PR away from shipping? Not important. There is only one priority now, and it stares back at you from your terminal in a cascade of deprecation warnings and orphaned puts calls from 2019.

The. Output. Must. Be. Cleaned.

After running this skill. Bliss:

❯ bundle exec rspec
..............................................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................................
..............................................................................................................................

Finished in 4 minutes 2 seconds (files took 8.06 seconds to load)
892 examples, 0 failures

Overview

This skill attempts to handles the full range of unexpected RSpec output:

• Ruby warnings (already initialized constant, method redefined)
• Gem and Rails deprecation notices
• Stray puts, p, pp, or Rails.logger calls left behind from debugging
• ActiveRecord or ActionView deprecation warnings
• Output from third-party libraries that should be silenced in test

It works through the output one issue at a time: locate the source test, reproduce in isolation, fix the root cause, verify it's gone, then commit. Each fix is its own commit so individual changes can be reviewed or cherry-picked independently.

Installation

Copy the skill to your Claude Code skills folder:

cp -r clean-rspec-output ~/.claude/skills/

Or clone directly:

git clone https://github.com/thoughtbot/clean-rspec-output ~/.claude/skills/clean-rspec-output

Usage

From inside a Claude Code session, in the root of your Rails project:

/clean-rspec-output

The skill will ask which branch to work on before doing anything (it creates one commit per fix, so the branch choice matters).

How it works

1. Capture: runs the full suite twice: once in default format to identify noise, once in documentation format to locate the source test for each issue.
2. Triage: reads the output and groups issues by likely root cause.
3. Fix loop: for each issue: locates the test, reproduces the output in isolation with a single rspec command, fixes the root cause, verifies the output is gone, then commits.
4. Final check: re-runs the full suite and confirms nothing new surfaced.

The skill will not start planning or applying a fix until it can reproduce the output with a scoped command. That reproduction case is also the verification case, so there is no ambiguity about whether the fix worked.

What it will and won't change

The skill fixes how a test runs. It should not change what it covers.

Legitimate fixes:

• Removing stray puts/p/pp calls left over from debugging
• Updating deprecated RSpec or Rails APIs to their modern equivalents
• Silencing third-party output at the configuration level
• Fixing incomplete factory data that causes a warning during setup

Out of scope:

• Removing assertions or collapsing branches to make noise stop
• Changing the values passed to expect(...) to ones that happen not to warn
• Rewriting or restructuring tests beyond what the noise fix requires
• Addressing test failures

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. If you'd like to improve the workflow or add handling for new categories of output:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Open a pull request

License

This skill is open source and available under the MIT License.

About thoughtbot

This skill is maintained by thoughtbot. We are passionate about open source software and helping teams ship maintainable, well-tested software.

See thoughtbot's other projects.

The names and logos for thoughtbot are trademarks of thoughtbot, inc.