Acceptance Test Design Mandates

Four mandates enforced during peer review. All must pass before handoff to software-crafter.

LANGUAGE CONVENTION FRAME (read FIRST — overrides all examples below)

Code examples in this skill use Python syntax for illustration only. They are NOT prescriptive about target language. nWave is language-agnostic per the "genericity and agnosticism" mandate (2026-05-24).

Before applying mandates, detect the target project's language from manifest files: package.json → TypeScript/JS; Cargo.toml → Rust; go.mod → Go; pyproject.toml/setup.py/Pipfile → Python; pom.xml/build.gradle → Java/Kotlin; *.csproj/*.fsproj → C#/F#; Gemfile → Ruby; Package.swift → Swift.

When the target language is NOT Python: adapt EVERY code example — replace Python imports (from pytest_bdd import ..., from hypothesis import ...), type hints, class/function syntax, test-framework idioms, directory conventions (tests/ vs test/ vs __tests__/) with target equivalents. Project conventions ALWAYS WIN over skill examples — if the user's repo has 50 TS files and zero Python files, mandates apply via TypeScript test framework, never Python pytest.

Empirical anchor: 5 of 5 Python code blocks in this skill, zero TS/Go/Rust — root-cause for language-leak per F-SKILL-EXAMPLES-LANGUAGE-LEAK. Connects [[feedback_language_adapter_plugin_architecture_2026_05_24]] (genericity mandate).

Mandate 1: Hexagonal Boundary Enforcement

Tests invoke through driving ports (entry points), never internal components.