Robert C. Martin Acceptance Pipeline Best Practices

Language-neutral specification for a portable acceptance-test pipeline: Gherkin feature files to JSON IR to generated acceptance tests to mutation testing. Based on Robert C. Martin's Acceptance Pipeline Specification. Contains ~50 rules across 14 categories, prioritized by impact.

When to Apply

Reference these rules when:

• Building a Gherkin parser that outputs JSON IR
• Implementing an acceptance test generator from JSON IR
• Writing an acceptance runtime that expands scenarios and dispatches steps
• Implementing mutation testing for acceptance test example values
• Setting up the full pipeline (parser, generator, runner, mutator) in a new project
• Debugging pipeline failures (parse errors, generation issues, mutation classification)

Pipeline Overview

The pipeline has two modes: