ADR-0066 — Checks: the adopter validity bar and the producer-internal reference values
- Sections
- 6
- Format
- Markdown
- Order
- 102 / 156
Context
A conformance regime sized for a language ecosystem (document-copy clauses, count acceptance checks, maturity ladders) reads as gatekeeping to adopters (O-004, O-012 §3) — while the underlying test data (fixtures with pinned expectations, a labeled prose fixture set) is genuinely valuable to the tooling that checks specs.
Decision
- Adopter validity bar (the whole of it): a workspace is valid when it has (a) a populated
AGENTS.md(soft length guidance), (b) the core templates present, and (c) at least one spec satisfying the core checks ofdocs/reference/checks.md. Nothing else is required; no document-copy clause; no maturity ladder. - Evidence rules survive verbatim (checklist level):
non-empty-paste— a completion claim binds to pasted output or a CI link, never a bare "tests passed" — the failure illustrated (small-N, preliminary) by [EVIBOUND];no-open-critical— work is not closed with an open blocking question. - Reference values are producer-internal. The closed-set cardinalities and their reconciliation
checks live only in
conformance/README.md(producer note) and the cheatsheet appendix. Adopter-facing pages list values, never counts. - The fixture set is "checks fixtures": test data for
docs/reference/checks.md, consumed by suspec-cli. Fixtures pin expected results per the two-way severity split (hard error / warning); each spec-format fixture domain ships a simple/SOL equivalence pair asserting both surfaces encode the identical requirement record (the anti-fork proof), plus intake, change-plan, and inventory fixtures.
Alternatives considered
| Alternative | Why weaker |
|---|---|
| Keep the three-clause definition + ladder | Measures adopters against producer concerns; the reports name it as friction |
| Drop fixtures | suspec-cli loses its oracle; the checks contract becomes untestable |
Consequences
Positive: "valid" is answerable in one breath. Negative: producers carry the reconciliation burden explicitly (where it belongs).
Status
Accepted. Partially supersedes ADR-0026 and ADR-0051 (validity-bar clauses) and ADR-0033 (suspec framing); refines ADR-0063.
Propagation
conformance/ (README, yaml, fixtures), checks.md, cheatsheet appendix, evals, suspec-cli.
Ledger note (2026-06-12): the checks fixtures' home renamed to
checks/by ADR-0070; step-output scoring became the step-bars reference page per ADR-0071.
Starter kit: Set up a workspace