Check the role of an acceptance witness

What the check reads

The default-on verify-stage check is a warning. It groups acceptance annotations by criterion and inspects the enclosing test function, falling back to the file when needed. It flags acceptance tags on production sources and tags on a test carrier that also verifies derived SYS, SW or INT requirements. The companion acceptance_criteria_witnessed check shares the eligibility result and can report the missing qualifying witness.

proof audit --check acceptance_witness_quality

An illustrative case

Illustrative case: a parser unit test verifies a software requirement and also carries a stakeholder acceptance tag for a complete import workflow. The assertion covers parsing, but the stakeholder outcome also involves validation and persisted records. Keep the useful unit test and give the integrated workflow its own appropriate acceptance witness instead of changing labels to make the warning disappear.

Resolve the finding

1. Inspect the reported carrier and every requirement it claims to verify. Separate the software-level assertion from the stakeholder outcome.
2. Create or identify an acceptance test that exercises the promised behavior on the integrated system. Put the criterion annotation on that eligible carrier and remove misleading production tags.
3. Rerun the quality and witness checks, execute the acceptance test on the relevant revision and retain its result and environment.

What a clear result means

This is a structural eligibility check. It neither evaluates assertion strength nor executes the test, and a qualifying annotation can still point to a weak oracle. Review the exercised path and expected result. Repository merge blocking additionally depends on how the audit result is enforced by your project and CI policy.

Continue with one real issue

Acceptance criteria · Acceptance review current

Bring one finding, its requirement and the current evidence to scope a walkthrough of what your reviewer can establish and what still needs work.