Software Practices

Cover Policy Outcomes

TEST-COVER-POLICY-OUTCOMES

TestingValidation PolicyVerification
Give feedback

Summary

Test allowed, denied, redacted, fallback, and unsupported policy outcomes. Policy value lives at decision boundaries, so assert caller-visible behavior instead of internals.

Rule

Cover allowed, denied, redacted, and fallback behavior in policy tests.

Why

Policy code is most useful at its decision boundaries: allowed, denied, redacted, fallback, preserved, and unsupported. Testing only the allowed path misses the cases where security, privacy, compatibility, or user messaging matters most.

Helps

  • Makes access, privacy, compatibility, and fallback behavior explicit and reviewable.

Limits

Avoid coupling tests to policy internals. Assert the observable decision, redaction, error, or fallback that callers rely on.

Agent Instruction

Cover allowed, denied, redacted, fallback, preserved, and unsupported outcomes in policy tests.

Mechanisms

Supported by table-driven policy tests, fixtures for each decision class, redaction assertions, and explicit denied/unsupported error checks.

References