Dogfood

Verify what the changed product actually does and how the affected journeys feel. Stay candidate-pinned, behavior-scoped, evidence-first, and read-only with respect to source code.

1. Pin the candidate, environment, and expected behavior

Resolve the exact branch, PR, commit, or supplied candidate; comparison base; current head; changed behavior; acceptance criteria; application entry point; test identities/data; browser capability; and external-effect authority.

Never test an unpinned moving candidate. Use a local, preview, or explicitly authorized test environment. Do not use production data or trigger real payments, emails, messages, account changes, or third-party effects without separate explicit authority.

Establish controlling expected behavior only from normative authority:

explicit user direction and accepted criteria
→ confirmed product, plan, specification, design, or domain contract
→ exact-current documentation only when that documentation is itself authoritative
→ unresolved expectation gap