[quality] No CI unit tests for QA pipeline Python helpers

[kubestellar-hive]

Finding

testing-lab only has a lint.yaml CI workflow (offline Argo workflow lint). The Python QA infrastructure — tests/shared/wait_for_shell.py and the behave step files under tests/*/features/steps/ — has no unit test CI.

A regression in these helpers (e.g., broken SSH polling, screenshot capture, timing utilities) would silently break all QA pipeline runs without any pre-merge signal.

The sister repo testsuite has a unit-tests.yml with pytest tests/unit/ that serves as a model.

Recommendation

1. Add tests/unit/ directory with a test_shared.py unit test file
2. Add .github/workflows/unit-tests.yml running pytest tests/unit/ -v --cov=tests --cov-report=xml
3. At minimum: syntax-check all Python step files and validate wait_for_shell.py has expected functions

Priority

• Impact: high (silent failure in QA pipeline foundation)
• Effort: medium (need to write initial test file and workflow)

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Filed by quality agent (hold-gated mode)