Conformance: The Criterion Walk

Conformance review asks a different question than quality review: did the change do what it was asked to do, completely? It judges a diff against an explicit acceptance contract.

Acceptance Contracts

• conformance-explicit-contract: Conformance MUST be judged against an explicit, criterion-by-criterion acceptance contract, not an implicit sense of "done".

Met / Unmet / Divergent

• conformance-per-criterion-verdict: Each acceptance criterion MUST be judged individually as met, unmet, or divergent.
• conformance-divergent-distinct: Divergent — built, but in a way that conflicts with the intent ("built right but wrong") — MUST be distinguished from unmet (not built at all); they have different fixes.

Coverage Backstop

• conformance-full-walk: An always-on reviewer MUST walk every criterion as a coverage backstop, so no criterion is silently skipped when the diff does not obviously touch it.

Demand Evidence

• conformance-demand-evidence: A "met" verdict MUST cite evidence in the diff; absence of evidence is not "met".