We give a characterization of generic pseudo-Anosov mapping classes purely in terms of their expressions in the shear coordinates, thus giving an answer to a problem raised by Papadopoulos--Penner [PP93]. This characterization has a cluster algebraic generalization called the sign stability introduced in [IK21]. By combining with the results in [IK21], we see that the algebraic entropies of the cluster $\mathcal{A}$- and $\mathcal{X}$-transformations induced by a generic pseudo-Anosov mapping class both coincide with its topological entropy.