evidence-kit

A held-constant test baseline and a committed per-run evidence manifest for the validate stage: a stage stamp proves a stage was invoked, evidence-kit proves it produced its green result. The manifest is a versioned, hashable wire contract (# contract: evidence-manifest v1) an external verifier can consume, so the kit is adoptable with or without an iteration lifecycle.

The gates: check-evidence-baseline (baseline grammar, blocking-slug liveness, scenario coverage), check-evidence-manifest (manifest grammar and, where lifecycle drives the tree, close-entry green block + validate-stamp coupling), check-battery-roster (the runner doc’s battery block against the suite roster) and check-producer-liveness (no stage entry while the producer is still running). The bin/ tools that drive it: run-validate.sh (the codified spine that runs the suites and records evidence) and diff-baseline.sh (the situational runtime diff). See SPEC.md for the full contracts.

Install

Vendor the kit beside gate-sdk (required), then:

check-evidence-baseline
check-evidence-manifest
check-battery-roster
check-producer-liveness   # entry hook only — never gates.list, see step 6

Regenerate the hook + graph artifacts: bash gate-sdk/bin/gen-pre-commit.sh --write.

Seed the two surfaces — .workflow/validate-baseline.txt:
```
# contract: evidence-kit/SPEC.md §Baseline manifest — held-constant validate baseline: <suite> <scenario> <status> [<slug>]
```
and .workflow/validate-evidence.txt:
```
# contract: evidence-manifest v1
```
(override the paths with EVIDENCE_KIT_BASELINE_FILE / EVIDENCE_KIT_MANIFEST_FILE).
Configure the suites — copy templates/evidence-config.sh into your gates dir as evidence-config.sh, naming EVIDENCE_KIT_SUITES, an EVIDENCE_KIT_RUN_<suite> command per suite, and the EVIDENCE_KIT_PARSER adapter (exit-code for a whole-suite pass/fail, libtest for per-test result logs, or your own log-parsing command).
Record evidence at validate — run bash evidence-kit/bin/run-validate.sh; it runs each suite, diffs the baseline, and records one evidence line per suite — written to the manifest in a single fold once the whole roster has run, so a suite needing a clean worktree may sit anywhere in it.
Optional lifecycle integration — set LIFECYCLE_KIT_BOUNDARY_TRUNCATE to the evidence manifest so a new iteration starts from the contract header, and the manifest gate’s close-entry and stamp-coupling assertions arm automatically.
Wire check-producer-liveness on LIFECYCLE_KIT_ENTRY_PREFLIGHT rather than in gates.list, its command naming the lock file through a name-resolving front end rather than a path (<stage>=<front end> check-producer-liveness <lock-file>; SPEC.md §check-evidence-manifest owns why a preflight entry names the gate), at whichever stage entries must not begin while run-validate is still running. It asks whether a producer is in flight, not whether the tree is consistent, so a battery that run-validate itself invokes would red every run against that run’s own lock. See SPEC.md §check-producer-liveness.

Test

bash gate-sdk/bin/run-gate-tests.sh evidence-kit/gate-tests evidence-kit/checks