Definition of done

A Core change is complete when its scientific contract, negative behavior, artifact meaning, and claim ceiling agree. Compilation, coverage, or one successful dataset cannot close a change whose public meaning reaches beyond that evidence.

Completion by scientific surface

Changed surface	Required positive evidence	Required challenge evidence
parser or external-engine adapter	representative accepted records, source identity, round trip or stable export	malformed, truncated, unsupported, and contradictory records
domain model or lifecycle	invariant-preserving construction and declared transitions	invalid combination, forbidden transition, refusal, and failure
score, threshold, or FDR rule	reference values, orientation, boundary values, and regression fixtures	ties, empty strata, decoys, contaminants, missing values, and sensitivity
quantification or normalization	design-aware expected results and stable ordering	sparsity, batch, scale, missingness, zero, and outlier pressure
workflow-family behavior	primary package, companion pressure, acceptance bars, and provenance	transfer case that narrows or refuses the family claim
public artifact or schema	round trip, compatibility, lineage, and consumer review	unsupported version, incomplete provenance, and rejected payload
performance path	serial equivalence, determinism, resource envelope, and retained output	partial failure, cancellation, exhaustion, and nondeterministic ordering

Evidence closure

flowchart LR
    C["changed scientific claim"] --> I["contract and invariant proof"]
    I --> N["negative and boundary cases"]
    N --> B["benchmark or reference evidence"]
    B --> X["consumer and artifact review"]
    X --> Q{"claim fits evidence?"}
    Q -->|yes| D["complete"]
    Q -->|no| R["narrow, refuse, or add evidence"]

Use the focused domain suite for the edited rule, the relevant scientific family suite, and benchmark tests when the claim reaches family posture. Parser changes require the matching importer mutation and malformed-input evidence. Public API or CLI changes also require parity and consumer checks.

Completion record

Record the scientific contract, dataset or fixture provenance, parameter and policy values, expected failure behavior, exact checks, and the strongest sentence supported after the change. Separate imported external-engine results from repository-native computation.

Not complete

The change remains incomplete when an external file parses but rejected rows disappear, a threshold moves without sensitivity evidence, a benchmark uses the same assumptions as the implementation it is meant to challenge, or a successful Runtime execution is treated as proof of scientific acceptance.