Tutorial: Checklists are contracts (adopted standard)

Checklists are contracts (adopted standard)

RAP's adoption note for the hub standard checklists-are-contracts. The canonical, project-agnostic version lives in the read-only hub clone at assets/references/fairyfox.io/hub/standards/checklists-are-contracts.md — re-read it there for the authoritative wording. This page records what the rule is and how RAP already lives it.

The rule in plain English

A checklist — a standard's ## Verify table, a runbook's steps, a docs-site module, or an owner's multi-part request — is a contract, not a summary. Every item is owed an individually-recorded outcome before any "done" is claimed. The four rules:

  1. Enumerate every item mechanically, not by judgement. A touched standard expands to its full Verify table — never summarized at table level, never "the important ones". The compiler of the list does not get to choose which items are worth expanding; that choice is exactly how items disappear.
  2. Record each outcome individually before the done-mark exists — pass · fixed · N-A (reason) · gap (with a due marker). A bare ✅ summarizing a multi-item set is banned wording; replace it with a link to the itemized record (the adoption manifest, an audit file, the Verify results).
  3. Read optional items ambitiously — descope only out loud. "Include the ones that exist" / "where possible" defaults to the ambitious reading: build the thing. Descoping is allowed only explicitly and only by the owner; silent omission is a gap, never a pass.
  4. Deferral requires falsification, not a plausible reason. A blocked item carries evidence of a real attempt (the command run, the error text, the version checked) and a retest trigger. Probe first — a bounded probe precedes any "untestable"/"deferred" verdict.

Every pass ends with an explicit "NOT done / read leniently / needs the owner's eyes" section — the reviewer never has to extract it by challenge. And when a session log records a reusable lesson, the same commit adds the behavioural rule to CLAUDE.md or the relevant note (a lesson left as prose is a lesson that will be re-learned).

How RAP already lives it

  • The enforcing artifact now exists: adoption-manifest.md — no Standards adopted ✅ summary without a backing per-standard row. This is the concrete thing the standard is built around, seeded 2026-07-25.
  • The Default Workflow already itemizes — the lint→smoke→commit→verify loop and the check:docs/check:tidy/check:committed gates (repo-hygiene.md) are a standing checklist run per change, not a summary claim. check:committed exists precisely because "green locally" was once claimed while the fix sat uncommitted (see fix-patterns.md).
  • Process reports already end with a "what went wrong / friction" and honest not-done disclosure (process-reports.md).
  • The owner-directive case is spelled out in its own note, mandate-ledger.md.

Verify

Run the standard's ## Verify table (in the hub clone) and record the result in adoption-manifest.md. Passing means: no unbacked ✅/"adopted"/"all done" over a list; per-item outcomes recorded; deferred items carry an attempt log + retest trigger; each pass ends with a disclosed not-done list; a recorded lesson added its rule in the same commit.