Quality bars

A prototype and a payment system should not be held to the same standard. A quality bar states which kind of code is being measured, so the same measurement can be read appropriately.

A quality bar is declared by the owner of a repository and travels into the analysis. It does not change what is measured — the same properties are examined either way. It changes how the resulting bands are interpreted: what counts as adequate for a throwaway template is not what counts as adequate for production.

The tiers run from early-stage work through to production code. A repository with no declared bar is measured against the ordinary production expectation, which is the safe default: unstated code is assumed to matter.

This is interpretation, not exemption. A lower bar does not switch measurements off or hide findings. Everything is still measured and still reported; the bar affects how the result should be read. A prototype with exposed credentials is still a prototype with exposed credentials.

Because the bar changes how a result reads, it is recorded alongside the result and carried in the signed evidence. Anyone assessing that evidence later can see which standard was claimed, and judge whether it was the right one for what they are buying.

That visibility is what keeps the mechanism honest. Declaring a low bar is allowed; declaring it invisibly is not.

Two different concepts, easily confused. A quality bar is declared by the producer and shifts how measurement bands are interpreted. An acceptance profile is a buyer's binding criteria — what must be true for a delivery to pass. They coexist and neither replaces the other. In Assay, the buyer's standard is authored as a bar in its own sense, which compiles into a profile — the same word, a different thing.

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