Still, more trustworthy than buying more niche electronics from Amazon imo.
I'd imagine simplest one would be just to... passthru pins and leech off power at whatever voltage other device is commanding.
Testing cable is a quite bit more complicated on top of acting as "PD analyzer" and if it isn't advertising it it's probably not doing it.
For data transfer that wouldn't be a good metric though, so again you are right!
And maybe it won't just stop working like the one I bought did...
Which makes me sad because it was somewhat of an unique product because outside of the "chinese USB tester functions" (paging thru what negotiation succeeded and monitored voltage) it also had little buck-boost converter so I could use it as power supply (for example connect to bog standard 5V USB and boost it to 12V or current limit it).
(Sidenote, this pattern is so common with AliExpress: very very good hardware but janky software. But God do I like the hardware since it seems like even the most niche, non mainstream stuff still see steady innovation and improvement. None of that 10 year old hardware that used to be common for almost all hobby tier niches haha.)