| name | qa-review |
| description | Verifies a change meets its acceptance criteria and is safe to ship - regression, bug triage, ship/no-ship call. Use for QA sign-off on behavior, not source-code review (develop-review). |
QA review and sign-off
The quality gate between built and shipped. Verify behavior against the acceptance criteria, decide ship or no-ship, and report defects so they are actually fixable - applying review-principles (severity-rated, every finding with a fix). This closes the loop that design-interrogate (criteria) and the build phase opened.
Use for QA sign-off on a change or build. For writing the automated tests see qa-test; for hands-on bug-hunting see qa-explore; for critiquing the source code see develop-review.
Steps
- Anchor on the acceptance criteria. Pull them from the spec (
design-interrogate). No criteria means stop and get them - you cannot verify against nothing, and "looks fine" is not sign-off.
- Verify each criterion explicitly. Pass or fail, with evidence, walking the real user task rather than a feature tour. List unmet criteria as blocking.
- Regress by risk. Re-check what this change could plausibly have broken (shared code, adjacent flows, data migrations), not the whole product. Confirm the automated suite is green and pull in
qa-explore for the states and edges.
- Report each defect so it is actionable. Exact repro steps, expected vs actual, environment/build, and a severity (below). No bug without a repro.
- Make the call. Ship, ship-with-known-issues (list them), or no-ship - tied to severity and unmet criteria, not vibes. Record the decision and its rationale.
Severity
- 0 Trivial - cosmetic; fix when convenient.
- 1 Minor - small friction, easy workaround.
- 2 Major - blocks a non-critical path or frustrates many users; fix before release if feasible.
- 3 Critical - blocks a core task, data loss risk, or security issue; no-ship.
- 4 Blocker - broken build, unmet must-have criterion, or unsafe; no-ship, fix now.
Gotchas
- Signing off without acceptance criteria is theater; verify against something concrete and written.
- Severity inflation erodes trust; reserve Critical/Blocker for genuine ship-stoppers.
- "Works on my machine" is not verification - state the build and environment you tested.
- Regression-testing everything wastes the window; target by risk and let the automated suite cover the rest.
- A defect without repro steps gets bounced back; spend the minute to capture them.
