guide-board/workplans/GUIDE-BOARD-WP-0005-challenge-and-exclusion-handling.md

id, type, title, repo, domain, status, owner, planning_priority, planning_order, created, updated, state_hub_workstream_id

id	type	title	repo	domain	status	owner	planning_priority	planning_order	created	updated	state_hub_workstream_id
GUIDE-BOARD-WP-0005	workplan	Challenge And Exclusion Handling	guide-board	markitect	completed	codex	high	5	2026-05-15	2026-05-16	fb11e1c7-6c0c-4ec7-a163-da98b2fe9f8f

GUIDE-BOARD-WP-0005: Challenge And Exclusion Handling

Purpose

Represent authority exclusions, extension challenges, target expectations, waivers, and defects as distinct review concepts. Guide-board already supports expectations and waivers, but real assessments also need a way to record that a test was excluded by an authority, challenged as invalid or mis-mapped, or identified as a target defect.

Background

Conformance work often includes dispute and exclusion paths. A failed check may be a product issue, a harness issue, an unsupported optional feature, a known waived risk, an authority-approved exclusion, or a local challenge awaiting review. Reports need to make those distinctions visible instead of flattening everything into pass, fail, blocked, or waived.

Boundary

This workplan owns guide-board's generic challenge and exclusion model. It does not decide authority-specific challenge rules, certification program policy, or whether a challenge is valid. Extensions may provide authority-specific fields, but the core should preserve them without embedding domain policy.

D5.1 - Challenge And Exclusion Data Contracts

id: GUIDE-BOARD-WP-0005-T001
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "6ff4e6f7-bce6-4e7f-a5af-e0c67cfa7e55"

Acceptance:

• Define schemas for authority exclusions and extension challenges.
• Distinguish challenge/exclusion records from expectations and waivers.
• Support links to requirement refs, check IDs, evidence IDs, authority source refs, owners, review status, rationale, expiry or review dates, and native challenge IDs where available.
• Keep the data contract usable by executable harnesses, hosted suites, and procedural packs.

Progress:

• Added docs/schemas/challenge-set.schema.json and docs/schemas/exclusion-set.schema.json.
• Added optional challenges_ref and exclusions_ref assessment profile fields.
• Supported requirement, check, evidence, result, classification, authority source, owner, review status, rationale, review date, expiry, native ID, and metadata fields.

D5.2 - Policy Application And Finding Annotation

id: GUIDE-BOARD-WP-0005-T002
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "fd384bd3-40c4-4344-8b7d-cb123dbf2cac"

Acceptance:

• Load challenge and exclusion references from assessment profiles.
• Annotate findings and evidence with challenge or exclusion state without silently hiding unexpected failures.
• Preserve separate counts for expected findings, waived findings, challenged findings, authority exclusions, and unresolved defects.
• Add tests that prove challenge and exclusion records affect reporting without corrupting gate semantics.

Progress:

• Loaded challenge and exclusion refs through the policy layer.
• Annotated findings with challenge refs, exclusion refs, and review status.
• Annotated matching evidence with review refs.
• Kept default unexpected_findings gate semantics visible unless a finding is separately expected or waived.
• Added tests proving challenged and excluded findings remain gate-visible.

D5.3 - Report Visibility And Review Workflow

id: GUIDE-BOARD-WP-0005-T003
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "791071c0-8a9a-462b-83b3-75548bb8524f"

Acceptance:

• Show challenge, exclusion, waiver, expectation, and defect distinctions in Markdown and JSON assessment packages.
• Make unresolved review items easy to find in retained run summaries.
• Provide CLI history or report helpers that expose review state for the latest run.
• Document how an operator should treat challenged or excluded findings.

Progress:

• Added Markdown report review summaries.
• Added challenge, exclusion, unresolved defect, and unresolved review counts to retention summaries and trend projections.
• Included applied challenge and exclusion records in JSON assessment packages.
• Exposed review counts through existing retained run helpers.

D5.4 - Tests And Documentation

id: GUIDE-BOARD-WP-0005-T004
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "43b966da-af8d-479b-93bd-6b6741fdab37"

Acceptance:

• Add schema tests and policy tests for challenges and exclusions.
• Add a sample or SDK fixture scenario that produces at least one challenged or excluded finding.
• Update assessment operations, extension SDK, and compliance evidence pack docs.
• Keep certification boundary language explicit.

Progress:

• Added focused schema and policy tests through a fixture extension scenario.
• Updated assessment operations, extension SDK, compliance evidence pack, and architecture docs.
• Kept boundary language explicit: challenges and exclusions are review state, not certification conclusions.

Definition Of Done

• The core has separate, tested concepts for expectations, waivers, challenges, authority exclusions, and defects.
• Reports surface those concepts without overstating certification conclusions.
• Retained summaries expose unresolved review work.
• Extension authors know how to supply authority-specific challenge metadata.