Checklists

requirements.md

Specification Quality Checklist: Ratchet, baseline & census gate remediation

Purpose: Validate specification completeness and quality before proceeding to planning Created: 2026-09-26 Mission: spec.md

Content Quality

  • ✅ No implementation details (languages, frameworks, APIs) — see Note 1
  • ✅ Focused on user value and business needs
  • ✅ Written for non-technical stakeholders — see Note 1
  • ✅ All mandatory sections completed

Requirement Completeness

  • ✅ No [NEEDS CLARIFICATION] markers remain
  • ✅ Requirements are testable and unambiguous
  • ✅ Requirement types are separated (Functional / Non-Functional / Constraints)
  • ✅ IDs are unique across FR-###, NFR-###, and C-### entries
  • ✅ All requirement rows include a non-empty Status value
  • ✅ Non-functional requirements include measurable thresholds
  • ✅ Success criteria are measurable
  • ✅ Success criteria are technology-agnostic (no implementation details) — see Note 1
  • ✅ All acceptance scenarios are defined
  • ✅ Edge cases are identified
  • ✅ Scope is clearly bounded
  • ✅ Dependencies and assumptions identified

Mission Readiness

  • ✅ All functional requirements have clear acceptance criteria
  • ✅ User scenarios cover primary flows
  • ✅ Mission meets measurable outcomes defined in Success Criteria
  • ✅ No implementation details leak into specification — see Note 1

Notes

1. Domain exception (accepted): this mission's product is the test-suite gate infrastructure, and its audience is maintainers and agents. Gate modules, allowlist symbols and _baselines.yaml keys are therefore domain nouns, not implementation leakage, and are named so each requirement is verifiable. The spec prescribes what each gate must detect or tolerate, not how (for example, the ban-widening mechanism and census re-keying design are left to plan). 2. One open design point is deliberately deferred to plan, not a clarification gap: whether line-keyed YAML census data files are migrated or listed in the enumerated exemption list (Edge Cases, FR-003). 3. Validation iteration 1: all items pass. 4. Revision 2 (post-spec squad: priti, renata, debbie): folded 2 critical + ~12 high findings (bounded exemption list, enforcing-leaf definition, per-site counting, census collisions, os-detect pins, #3962 fold, C-005-safe predicate, stale-entry split). Re-validated: all items pass.