qa-acceptance

1# QA Acceptance
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3Write acceptance criteria that a reviewer can run against the running app and decide pass or fail without asking the author. The criteria are the contract — automated tests cover correctness, QA covers feature-level behavior.
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5## When to use
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7- A feature change is heading to QA and needs a written validation plan.
8- A reviewer is asked to verify a PR that touches user-visible behavior.
9- An incident postmortem requires a regression check before reopen-prevention.
10- A release candidate needs a pre-cut smoke pass.
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12## When not to use
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14- The change is unit-test-only (utility refactor, internal naming). Acceptance criteria are unnecessary churn.
15- You are asked to write tests against API contracts. Use contract testing, not feature QA.
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17## Acceptance criteria format
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19Each criterion is a single, independently-verifiable statement:
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21```md
22- **Given** <starting state>, **when** <action>, **then** <observable outcome>.
23```
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25Example:
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27```md
28- **Given** a CSV export with 0 rows, **when** the user clicks Export, **then** the file downloads with only the header row and the UI shows "Exported 0 rows".
29```
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31Avoid criteria that combine multiple `when`s or `then`s. Split them.
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33## What every plan must cover
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351. **Golden path.** The most common successful flow, end to end.
362. **Empty and minimum states.** Zero items, one item, missing optional inputs.
373. **Boundary inputs.** Max length strings, max numeric values, unicode, RTL text where applicable.
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