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type: adr id: adr-0071 status: accepted created: 2026-06-12 updated: 2026-06-12

ADR-0071 — Step bars: the per-step quality bars are product reference

Context

evals/ was an island. No tool contract names it (docs/reference/future-cli.md promises no corpus eval); nothing in README, docs/, starter-kit/, or the checks data links to it; even the spec-first pilot defines its metrics operationally on review packets. Each page carried the label "internal rationale; not needed to use corpus" — yet what the pages actually define is not internal at all: the predicates that say whether a spec faithfully distilled its sources (stance preserved, nothing invented as sourced), whether a task faithfully bounded its spec, whether a review's results are consistent with its evidence. That is the definition of done for each step of the loop — the fourth thing the product teaches, next to how (docs 01–10), what shape (templates), and what a tool can flag (checks). The directory name compounded the mislabel: "evals" is ML-benchmark jargon, the same register problem ADR-0070 fixes for "conformance".

Decision

1. One reference page: docs/reference/step-bars.md. The six step bars (their boolean predicates, the notes a scorer needs) plus the cross-step predicates (re-parses clean, chain unbroken, result consistent with evidence, drift surfaced) and a short advanced-lifecycle scoring note. Honesty level: checklist — a reviewer applies a bar by hand; no tool implements any of it today.
2. The page is product, linked from the happy path — an adopter grading their own loop uses the same bars the producer uses as a regression rubric when guides or templates change. One home, two uses; no separate producer copy.
3. evals/ is deleted. Load-bearing citations move with their claims onto the new page. The propagation matrix drops evals as a derived surface and gains the page.

Alternatives considered

• Move to .agents/evals/ — honest about today's only consumer, but buries product content as producer tooling and keeps the jargon name; rejected by the owner.
• checks/rubrics/ — blurs the line ADR-0063 draws between the toolable contract and judgment instruments; a bar is not a check.
• Fold each bar into its happy-path page — puts the right content in the wrong weight class; docs/01–10 are deliberately light, and the cross-step predicates have no single home in that shape.

Consequences

Accepted. Supersedes the standalone evals/ surface (as re-keyed by the repositioning); refines ADR-0065/0066 framing. The bars keep their predicate ids (P/S/T/R/V/C series) so existing producer records that cite them stay readable.

Propagation

new reference page, evals/ deletion, happy-path + cheatsheet links, root bootloader AGENTS.md repo map, propagation matrix.