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Research and competitive boundary

Scan date: 2026-07-22 Claim posture: adjacent-capability map, not an exhaustive market or patent search

Evidence that the problem exists

  • FAR recognizes acceptance testing as a way to determine whether a product conforms to contract requirements.
  • Section 508 procurement guidance recommends enforceable accessibility criteria, representative workflows, testing checkpoints, and corrective action.
  • Public software contracts routinely require approved acceptance plans, test data, expected results, remediation, and retest.
  • NASA software-assurance guidance asks for objective, traceable acceptance evidence.

Adjacent software and standards

Adjacent category What it does Boundary
Contract lifecycle management drafting, negotiation, signature, obligation tracking does not ordinarily execute technical acceptance evidence
Test management plans, cases, runs, defects test is not source-bound contractual obligation
Pact/PactFlow API consumer-provider contracts machine interactions, not procurement language or human review
OCDS contracting lifecycle and implementation milestones data representation, not evidence evaluation
GRC/OSCAL control catalogs and compliance evidence broader control programs; different acceptance unit and buyer workflow
Spec-driven development gates verify implementation against development specs team/internal spec, not authoritative procurement source and mixed evidence
IV&V services expert independent verification service model; potential partner or competitor

Defensible contribution hypothesis

Not a new hashing primitive, test runner, contract parser, or evidence store. The contribution under test is:

  1. the approved clause is a first-class, source-bound object;
  2. verification method is explicit before evaluation;
  3. human, external, automated, and unverifiable evidence remain distinct;
  4. missing evidence cannot become breach or success;
  5. the result is portable and replayable outside the originating tool.

Primary sources

Research still required

  • Current commercial test-management and government-acceptance platforms.
  • Patent search for executable contractual acceptance and evidence receipts.
  • Practitioner workflows in state/local government and federal primes.
  • Whether OSCAL or an existing assurance-case format should be extended instead.
  • Public contract samples suitable for an independent mapping benchmark.