External Tools

dq-awesomeqa orchestrates three external tools. Skills never call them directly - they instruct your coding agent which CLI command to run, then interpret the output in professional QA language.

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democratize-quality MCP Server

Attribute	Detail
Type	Model Context Protocol (MCP) server
Distribution	Bundled in the plugin via .mcp.json
Activation	Platform-dependent (automatic on some agents, setup-step registration on others)
Used by	/qa-api, /qa-exec

What it does

The MCP server is the engine for API testing. It provides tools for:

• API test generation - reads your OpenAPI/Swagger or GraphQL schema and generates a structured test plan covering happy paths, edge cases, authentication, error responses, and schema validation
• Test execution - runs the generated tests against your live API
• Self-healing - when schema changes break existing tests, the server proposes updated assertions automatically

How it's activated

The plugin ships with a .mcp.json file at the repository root. Agents that support automatic MCP discovery register this server at install time. On other platforms, run /qa-setup and follow the platform install guide to ensure the server is available.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "democratize-quality": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@democratize-quality/mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

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accessibility-cli (a11y-cli)

Attribute	Detail
Package	@democratize-quality/accessibility-cli
Install	npm install -g @democratize-quality/accessibility-cli
Runtime	Node.js ≥ 18
Used by	/qa-ui, /qa-a11y, /qa-exec

What it does

a11y-cli has two operating modes:

UI automation mode - drives a Playwright browser to execute the UI interaction YAML generated by /qa-ui. Captures screenshots and (optionally) video recordings of every step.

Accessibility audit mode - runs axe-core WCAG audits on each page visited during UI testing. Reports violations by WCAG criterion, impact level, and affected HTML elements.

CLI commands used by skills

# Run UI test script
a11y-cli run ./qa-reports/ui/ui-test.yaml

# Run standalone accessibility audit
a11y-cli audit https://app.example.com --level AA --output ./qa-reports/a11y/

# Check version
a11y-cli --version

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dq-nbomber CLI

Attribute	Detail
Package	dq-nbomber-cli (.NET global tool)
Install	dotnet tool install -g dq-nbomber-cli
Runtime	.NET 8 SDK or higher
Used by	/qa-perf, /qa-exec, /qa-codegen

What it does

dq-nbomber generates and executes load test scenarios using the NBomber framework. It:

• Reads your OpenAPI or GraphQL schema
• Generates a YAML load test configuration covering your key endpoints
• Runs the scenario and produces an HTML + JSON report
• Can also generate a full C# NBomber project for more complex custom scenarios (via /qa-codegen)

CLI commands used by skills

# Generate load test config from schema
dq-nbomber generate --schema https://api.example.com/swagger.json \
  --output ./load-tests/dq-nbomber.yaml

# Validate a config file
dq-nbomber validate ./load-tests/dq-nbomber.yaml

# Run a load test
dq-nbomber run ./load-tests/dq-nbomber.yaml \
  --report-dir ./qa-reports/perf

# Check version
dq-nbomber --version

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Tool responsibility matrix

Capability	democratize-quality MCP	a11y-cli	dq-nbomber
API contract testing	✅	-	-
API schema validation	✅	-	-
Browser UI automation	-	✅	-
WCAG accessibility audits	-	✅	-
Load / stress testing	-	-	✅
C# test code generation	-	-	✅
Self-healing tests	✅	-	-