| name | backend-qa |
| description | Use when validating backend behavior in real execution paths, including APIs, jobs, queues, webhooks, auth boundaries, data integrity, failure handling, observability, performance, or adversarial backend conditions. |
Backend QA
Overview
Backend QA validates what downstream consumers and operators actually get from a service.
Signoff lens: Utility × Reliability × Contract — does it produce the needed outcome,
stay honest under failure and concurrency, and tell the truth in its schemas, permissions, and errors.
Shared QA methodology is defined in core.md. Read it first.
This file defines only backend-specific extensions.
Domain-Specific Passes
In addition to the 7 core passes defined in core.md:
- State & data emphasis — retries, deduplication, transactions, concurrent mutation, compensating paths
- Resilience emphasis — poison-message handling, queue replay, partial outage recovery
- Contract emphasis — status code accuracy, idempotency rules, ordering guarantees, error taxonomy
Signoff Criteria
- Missing Utility: the endpoint returns valid output that doesn't solve the consumer's job → FAIL
- Missing Reliability: concurrent or duplicate requests corrupt state, recovery depends on luck → FAIL
- Missing Contract: callers cannot distinguish auth failure from validation failure from dependency failure → FAIL
References
- core.md — Shared QA methodology
- Framework — Utility × Reliability × Contract in detail
- Playbook — Pass execution playbook
- Reporting — Findings format and severity classification
