Acceptance Criteria

Defines what an Acceptance Criterion record contains. In v1 (characterization oracle), acceptance criteria restate what the characterization suite must prove; under a future specification oracle (seam S1.1) they would instead carry the scope directly.

Schema

schemas/acceptance-criteria.schema.json. One JSON object per criterion; slices/<id>/acceptance-criteria.json is a JSON array of these.

Required fields

id (AC-NNNN), slice (SLC-NNNN), statement (≥10 characters — a real assertion, not a restated Behavior summary), behaviors.

Content obligations

Every Slice needs at least one Acceptance Criterion, and every criterion should cite the Behavior(s) it proves — in v1 behaviors[] should be non-empty for every criterion, since there is no other oracle yet to carry the scope. Set failure_path: true for criteria specifically about failure, timeout, or partial-completion behavior, and make sure such criteria actually exist — a Slice whose acceptance criteria are all happy-path is under-specified before a single test is written.

Behavior-ID citation

behaviors[] is the citation. A criterion with an empty behaviors[] under oracle_strategy: "characterization" has nothing anchoring it to observed system behavior — it is closer to a wish than a criterion.

Unknowns

If a criterion's exact boundary is still under discussion, write it as precisely as currently possible and flag the open question in the accompanying PRD — do not leave the statement vague to avoid committing.

Minimal worked example

{
  "id": "AC-0009",
  "slice": "SLC-0004",
  "statement": "An order placement request with quantity <= 0 is rejected with the same error code and message the legacy system returns",
  "behaviors": ["BHV-0042"],
  "failure_path": true
}