xk6-subcommand-agent

Bootstrap an AI-assisted k6 testing workflow in any editor — Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Codex CLI, OpenCode, or Cline.

xk6-subcommand-agent powers the k6 x agent command group, shipped as part of k6. One invocation drops a set of portable SKILL.md bundles into your project and wires every supported AI coding tool to the built-in k6 x mcp server. The bundled skills cover planning, smoke / load / browser tests, Playwright-to-k6 conversion, k6 docs lookup, end-to-end website performance testing, and Grafana Cloud k6 management, investigation, and maintenance.

Contents

• Quickstart
• Supported targets
• Bundled skills
• Commands
• How it works
• Safety
• Development
• Troubleshooting
• License

Quickstart

Make sure you have a recent k6 on your PATH, then from the root of your k6 project:

# Scaffold one or more editor targets.
k6 x agent init claude-code           # one editor
k6 x agent init claude-code cursor    # several
k6 x agent init --all                 # every supported target

# Verify what was installed.
k6 x agent status

Open your editor and ask it to plan or write a k6 test — the bundled skills auto-activate based on intent ("write a smoke test for…", "convert this Playwright script…").

Supported targets

[^cline]: Cline's MCP config is global, not project-scoped. init cline prints the JSON snippet to add to cline_mcp_settings.json.

Bundled skills

Skills live in agents/skills/ and are embedded into the binary.

Run k6 x agent skills show <name> to print a skill's full SKILL.md.

Commands

k6 x agent init <target>...   Write or update files for one or more targets
k6 x agent init --all         Initialize every registered target
k6 x agent status             Show what is installed in the current workspace
k6 x agent list               List available targets and bundled skills
k6 x agent skills list        List skills shipped in the binary
k6 x agent skills show <name> Print a skill's SKILL.md to stdout

Common flags for init:

• --dry-run — print the plan (paths, write modes, sizes) without touching disk.
• --force — overwrite a managed file that has been edited locally.
• --all — apply to every registered target (cannot be combined with positional names).

Example status output:

Agent installation status

[+] Claude Code
   - .mcp.json detected
[-] Cursor
   - Missing: .cursor/mcp.json
   - Hint: k6 x agent init cursor
...

[+] k6 MCP support
   - Found at /usr/local/bin/k6

How it works

• Skills are written once, in portable SKILL.md format. Targets that consume SKILL.md natively (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Copilot, OpenCode) get them verbatim. Targets that don't (Cursor, Cline) get a thin wrapper around the same body.
• MCP wiring is described once in agents/mcp/servers.yaml. Each target adapter knows where its config file lives and what shape it expects.
• Adapters compute a Plan; a shared safefs executes it. That keeps adapters tiny and centralises the safety rules.

For the full design, see docs/DESIGN.md.

Safety

• Never creates or modifies user-owned top-level files (AGENTS.md, README.md, etc.).
• Surgically merges shared JSON config (.vscode/mcp.json, .cursor/mcp.json, opencode.json, .mcp.json) — only the k6 entry is touched; other servers and unrelated keys are preserved.
• Files inside xk6-subcommand-agent-owned folders are stamped with an ownership marker. Re-running init is idempotent; --force is required to overwrite a file you have edited locally.
• --dry-run prints the full plan before any disk write.

Details: docs/DESIGN.md §9.

Development

Requires Go ≥ 1.25.5.

git clone https://github.com/grafana/xk6-subcommand-agent.git
cd xk6-subcommand-agent
make test         # go test -race ./...
make lint         # golangci-lint (>= 1.60)
make vet

To try local changes against a real k6 x agent invocation, build a custom k6 binary with xk6 build --with github.com/grafana/xk6-subcommand-agent=. and run it from the resulting ./k6.

Repo layout:

• agents/skills/ — SKILL.md source of truth (embedded via //go:embed).
• agents/mcp/servers.yaml — canonical MCP server schema.
• agents/adapters/<target>/ — per-target adapters; each self-registers via init().
• agents/core/ — shared Skill, MCPConfig, and safefs helpers.
• register.go, commands.go, status.go — CLI surface.

To add a new target, create a package under agents/adapters/<target>/ that implements adapters.Target and self-registers in init(). No edits to register.go are needed — the registry picks it up automatically.

Troubleshooting

• folder already exists / file collision — re-run with --force to overwrite managed files. xk6-subcommand-agent never deletes files it does not own.
• k6 not on PATH (status reports [-] k6 MCP support) — install k6 from https://grafana.com/docs/k6/latest/set-up/install-k6/, and make sure your editor launches in a shell that can find it.
• Cline MCP entry missing — Cline's MCP config is global. Copy the snippet printed by init cline into cline_mcp_settings.json.

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome — new target adapters and additional skills especially. Please run make test and make lint before submitting.

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.