Write acceptance criteria your agent can check

Acceptance criteria say when a story is done. In Slicemap they are a checklist inside the story, not separate cards on the board. Your agent works against them: it checks each one off as it verifies it and can’t move the story to a closed stage while one is unchecked.

Where criteria live

Open a story: its Acceptance criteria section holds the checklist, and Add criterion adds a line. You can also add one from the menu of a story on any view. In the Outline view, criteria are the rows nested under each story.

On a card, the Criteria field shows a count like 2/4: checked out of all. Turn the field on or off in Display (see Use views).

Write criteria the agent can check

The agent checks a criterion by doing something and looking at the result. Write each one so that the result is clear to someone who wasn’t in the conversation.

• One outcome per line. “Sign-up and login work” is two criteria. Split it so each can be checked on its own.
• Say what happens, not how it feels. Instead of “The form is user-friendly”, write “After a wrong password, the form says the email or password is wrong and keeps the email filled in.”
• Name the case. Cover the paths that matter: empty input, a wrong value, no network, a user without rights.
• Use real values. “Shows the 20 most recent orders, newest first” can be checked; “Shows recent orders” can’t.
• Say who checks what the agent can’t. If something can only be checked by a person, on a real phone or with a real payment, say so in the criterion, so the agent knows it is yours to check.

A story with criteria like these also gets a better estimate: the agent rates how clear the card is before it starts, and names what is missing when it isn’t. See Agent estimates in minutes.

Let your agent write them

You can ask your agent to write criteria for a story, for example “Write acceptance criteria for SM-142”. It sends the whole list with slicemap_set_acceptance_criteria, up to 30 criteria per story. When it rewrites the list, a criterion whose text stays the same keeps its check mark, new ones come in unchecked, and only the ones left out are removed. Read the list before work starts: it is what the agent will build.

How the agent checks them off

Slicemap tells your agent to check criteria one by one with slicemap_toggle_ac_done as it verifies them, not all at once at the end. Each check shows up on the card’s last change line, like “Alex’s agent checked a criterion”, so you can follow along on the board.

When the agent moves the story to a stage marked Closed, Slicemap checks the list first. If any criterion is unchecked, the move is refused with criteria_unchecked, the message lists the unchecked ones, and the story stays in its stage.

Note

The check applies to your agent. People on the board can move a story to any stage. Stages that are not Closed, like a review stage, accept a story with unchecked criteria, so the agent can hand it over for you to check the rest. See Set up stages.