Verification Result Contract
Verification Result Contract
Section titled “Verification Result Contract”Verification is useful only when the result can be interpreted without guessing.
This page describes consumer behavior, not a replacement for any technology-specific machine-readable schema.
Required interpretation properties
Section titled “Required interpretation properties”A verification consumer should be able to determine:
- which artifact or state was evaluated;
- which verification boundary applied;
- which evidence or inputs were used;
- which verification status was produced;
- whether the result is complete enough to rely on;
- why a failed or unresolved result was not accepted.
Do not collapse states
Section titled “Do not collapse states”A consumer must not convert:
- missing result → PASS;
- unknown status → PASS;
- unsupported status → PASS;
- incomplete evidence → PASS;
- replay divergence → PASS;
- integrity mismatch → PASS.
See Verification Status and Failure Semantics.
Preserve the original result
Section titled “Preserve the original result”If a later review, correction, or interpretation is added, preserve the original verification result and link the later event to it rather than rewriting history.
Exit codes and structured results
Section titled “Exit codes and structured results”Command exit behavior and a structured verification result solve related but different problems.
Use Exit Semantics for process-level behavior. Use the relevant versioned result contract for machine-readable verification state.