Acceptance profiles

A score does not decide anything on its own. An acceptance profile is the written-down definition of what "passing" means for a delivery — and every deviation from the standard baseline is disclosed rather than hidden.

A profile is an account-level, versioned definition of binding criteria:

• which lenses and dimensions are in scope for the decision;
• the minimums that must be met;
• critical floors — the things that fail a delivery outright regardless of the overall picture;
• how change over time is treated, where a delivery is judged partly on movement rather than absolute position.

A repository or a sponsorship is bound to a specific published version of a profile, so it is always determinable which criteria a given delivery was judged against.

Profiles derive from standard bases, and every deviation is disclosed in the generated documents. Nobody is prevented from writing a lenient profile. What cannot be done is write one quietly — where a profile departs from the baseline it derives from, the departure is stated in the document a reader receives.

Restriction would have been the obvious design: forbid weak profiles. Disclosure is stronger, because it keeps the criteria honest without pretending we can anticipate every legitimate reason an organisation needs something different.

Profiles are versioned and a binding names a version. Changing acceptance criteria means publishing a new version — a delivery already judged under an earlier version stays judged under it. Criteria that could be edited after the fact would make every past pass or fail unverifiable, because nobody could establish what was actually required at the time.

A profile is the compiled, binding form of a standard. In Assay, a buyer authors that standard as a bar, publishes it, and binds it to what it applies to; publishing compiles it into a profile of the kind described here. Producer and buyer are looking at the same object from two ends.

• Which gate to add first — covers choosing the first gate to enforce, and in what order.