deliver-acceptance-criteria

Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria define the observable behavior that must be true for a story or feature to be considered done. This skill turns feature context into concise, testable Given/When/Then scenarios that engineers and QA can verify without guessing intent.

When to Use

• After a user story, PRD section, or feature slice is defined
• When a team needs clear pass/fail conditions for implementation
• When writing QA-ready criteria for sprint planning or handoff
• When a story has edge cases, error paths, or non-functional expectations that should be explicit

When NOT to Use

• You need the user stories themselves -> use deliver-user-stories; this skill deepens a story that already exists
• You need systematic failure coverage across a whole feature -> use deliver-edge-cases; this skill stays story-scoped
• There is no story or slice to bind criteria to yet -> use deliver-prd or deliver-user-stories first
• You are defining success metrics for an experiment, not done-ness for a story -> use measure-experiment-design

Instructions

When asked to create acceptance criteria, follow these steps:

1. Confirm the story or feature scope Identify the exact slice of work. If the scope is unclear, ask for the user story, PRD section, or feature description before drafting criteria.

2. Separate the happy path from exceptions Start with the primary success flow, then add edge cases and error states that are likely or costly if missed.

3. Write each criterion as an observable scenario Use Given/When/Then language only. Keep each criterion independently testable and avoid implementation details.

4. Cover recovery and failure behavior Describe what the user sees or can do when validation fails, a dependency is unavailable, or a save action cannot complete.

5. Include non-functional expectations Add criteria for performance, accessibility, security, reliability, or auditability when they matter to the story.