Acceptance Test Builder

Goal: Deliver the smallest trustworthy acceptance-test portfolio for stated requirements through a user- or external-system-observable boundary. Modify only approved tests and test documentation; implement justified additions, updates, merges, and deletions without repairing product code.

Execution contract: Treat the ordered checkbox workflow below as this skill's Definition of Done. Work through every item in order, and mark it complete only when its action and required evidence are complete. N/A, skipped, unavailable, or delegated items remain incomplete. Before returning, apply this skill's verdict, decision, and approval rules to every incomplete item and prepend Checklist: X/Y completeIncomplete: None | section/item — reason; outcome impact; exact next action; list every incomplete item.

Tool Routing

Never run acceptance tests against production or an unapproved external target. Do not deploy, publish, migrate shared data, rotate credentials, or accept changed output merely to make a test pass.

Evidence Rules

• Derive expected behavior from requirements, public contracts, examples, invariants, or an independent reference; never from the implementation calculation being tested.
• Prefer a terminal durable or user-visible outcome over an intermediate status, mock call, log line, or internal method result.
• Use golden files or snapshots only for deterministic, reviewable contracts. Updating expected output is a specification change, not test verification.
• Make setup, data allocation, execution, cleanup, and rerun behavior reproducible; preserve the first failure before retries or cleanup obscure it.
• A passing command proves only the environment and scenarios it actually exercised. State every excluded cell and unavailable boundary.
• Do not test language, framework, package, database-vendor, or other generic behavior; test only the repository-owned observable contract, configuration, integration, or policy that depends on it.
• Treat KEEP, ADD, UPDATE, MERGE, DELETE, and NO_TEST as portfolio decisions, distinct from execution results. Do not default to ADD when existing evidence, consolidation, retirement, or accepted residual risk is the better answer.
• Delete or merge only when the test basis is obsolete or evidence shows that all still-required unique material behavior, failure modes, oracle strength, and useful failure localization remain covered.

Checklist

1. Establish the Change Boundary

• Resolve the requirements, acceptance criteria, actor, protected outcome, observable contract, explicit non-goals, approved portfolio decisions, allowed test paths, and allowed test-documentation paths; label inferred experience qualities as assumptions.
• Read applicable repository instructions and inspect Git state, untracked files, generated areas, and existing user changes before editing.
• Detect the project-native runner, directory layout, naming, fixtures, setup, cleanup, environment configuration, and CI invocation.
• Inventory existing tests affected by the requirement or contract and map their actual oracles before creating a new test.
• Map each requirement to the boundary that can prove it: UI, API, CLI, message, integration, file, or durable state.
• Identify credentials, services, accounts, ports, devices, browsers, datasets, and destructive effects required by the scenarios.
• Return BLOCKED before editing when no safe target, reliable expected contract, or separable workspace exists.

2. Design Reproducible Acceptance Evidence

• Define the protected outcome, defect class, setup, action, terminal outcome, independent oracle, expected evidence, and cleanup for every requirement.
• Confirm or derive one portfolio action per affected test and material risk. When no approved strategy exists, justify the action from impact, plausible failure, uniqueness, trust, and maintenance cost; record NO_TEST with existing proof, another control, or accepted residual risk.
• Prefer deterministic end-to-end evidence for material user-observable business risk. Use a narrower production-shaped contract or integration boundary only when it still proves the terminal outcome more deterministically or precisely; never replace acceptance evidence with a unit implementation check or cover an internal detail absent from the observable contract.
• Include invalid, authorization, boundary, partial-failure, retry, idempotency, recovery, and compatibility behavior only when it can materially change the protected outcome.
• Allocate unique or namespaced test data and control clock, randomness, locale, ordering, and concurrency where they affect reproducibility.
• Use real dependencies or approved emulators when mocks would bypass the behavior under acceptance; pin versions and verify readiness and reset behavior.
• For deterministic output, derive golden or diff expectations from an independent contract and keep the artifact small enough to review.
• For nondeterministic output, assert stable invariants and semantic fields instead of normalizing away failures or snapshotting noise.
• Locate UI and other interaction elements only through stable repository-owned IDs or dedicated test hooks; never locate by visible or translated copy, styling, layout, position, or incidental structure, and assert exact copy separately only when it is an explicit contract.
• Define the required or diagnostic gate and a review or retirement trigger when evidence is temporary, compatibility-bound, incident-specific, or coupled to a changing contract.

3. Implement within Test Scope

• Create or update tests in the existing project layout with behavioral names and failure messages that identify the violated requirement, protected outcome, and detected defect.
• Implement approved MERGE and DELETE actions without leaving superseded tests, fixtures, snapshots, helpers, registrations, or CI entries; preserve replacement traceability in repository-native paths, names, tags, or task evidence.
• Reuse maintained fixtures and helpers only when their defaults and side effects remain visible; avoid a new abstraction for one scenario.
• Make setup fail fast on missing prerequisites and make cleanup safe after success, assertion failure, timeout, cancellation, or partial setup.
• Keep tests rerunnable and idempotent; do not depend on execution order or silently reuse state from a previous run.
• Add the narrowest required test documentation only when contributors otherwise cannot configure, run, interpret, or clean up the new evidence.
• Do not edit production code, weaken assertions, broaden timeouts without evidence, skip failing cases, or regenerate expected artifacts to obtain a pass.
• Inspect the diff for unrelated formatting, generated churn, secrets, environment-specific paths, and changes outside the approved scope.

4. Execute and Preserve Evidence

• Run the smallest affected scenario first, then the relevant suite and required repository gate when available; when actions only remove evidence, run the replacement or nearest retained proof.
• Record the exact command, working directory, environment class, target, versions, exit status, duration, and artifact locations.
• Preserve the first failing output, seed, order, request, response, screenshot, diff, or durable state needed to reproduce the defect.
• Distinguish product failure, test defect, environment failure, unavailable dependency, and flaky evidence before changing the test.
• If the test exposes a product defect, stop modifying the implementation, retain the failing acceptance evidence, and report the smallest reproduction.
• Verify cleanup and rerun at least the affected scenario when state ownership or idempotency is material.
• Avoid retries unless they diagnose nondeterminism; a retry must not convert the initial failure into a silent pass.

5. Finalize without Overclaiming

• Map every requirement and protected outcome to its final test path or NONE, command or alternative control, oracle or accepted risk, and result as PASS, FAIL, BLOCKED, or UNPROVEN.
• Reconcile planned and actual portfolio actions, including justified deviations, and report the net count of tests added, updated, merged, and deleted without treating counts as quality targets.
• Use COMPLETE when all approved portfolio actions are implemented and required acceptance evidence executes to a recorded PASS or FAIL; this verdict describes evidence completion, not product correctness.
• Use INCOMPLETE when actions are implemented but an environment, dependency, or interrupted run prevents complete execution; state the exact missing check.
• Use BLOCKED when actions cannot be implemented safely, requirements lack a reliable oracle, or the workspace cannot be protected.
• Return created, changed, merged, and deleted test files, commands, evidence, cleanup result, limitations, product defects, and residual risks.

Output Contract

# Acceptance Test Build

**Verdict:** COMPLETE | INCOMPLETE | BLOCKED

## Scope and environment
- Requirements and approved paths
- Runner, boundary, target, and prerequisites

## Requirements matrix
| Protected outcome and test basis | Existing evidence or affected test | Action | Final test | Oracle and command | Gate and result | Review or retirement trigger |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ... | path / command / NONE | KEEP / ADD / UPDATE / MERGE / DELETE / NO_TEST | path / NONE | ... | required / diagnostic; PASS / FAIL / BLOCKED / UNPROVEN | ... |

## Changes and evidence
- Created or changed test and documentation files
- Deleted or consolidated tests and their replacement evidence; net portfolio effect
- Exact commands, outputs, and evidence artifacts
- Product defects preserved without repair

## Cleanup, limitations, and residual risks
State cleanup, unavailable environments, excluded cells, and remaining evidence needs.