What a requirement is

One thing that must be true of this server, with where the demand came from and what holds it to that. A test where there is one, not guarded where there is none.

It has to hold on while everything around it changes. That is what makes it worth a file of its own rather than a sentence in the change that established it. The change ends, the demand does not.

This is the base. What a change rested on and what would show it wrong is a decision. A requirement names the ones it stands on in its own restsOn:, see what a decision is. Where an entry goes and how to write it is Writing a requirement.

A feedback is one route a demand arrives by, and the most common one. It is not what this directory is for. A reader reads an entry long after the question that produced it had its answer. A demand arrives as readily from a review, from a recorded run, or from a read that found nothing that holds a rule everybody assumed.

What the state means#

status is held or open, and a third state derives from them:

open — accepted and not built yet. It comes out beside not guarded rather than in a list of its own. A requirement nobody has implemented and one that could silently regress are the same kind of thing.
not guarded — built, and heldBy names no test. It never stands in the front matter. An entry may not claim it of itself, and it is what a claim of held turns out to be. It is the honest answer for a requirement no test can hold. It is the one worth a look in a listing, because from afar it looks exactly like held.
held — built, and the tests it names hold it there. They name themselves. A test carries #[Requirement] and bin/cli requirements:cover writes heldBy from it, so the state follows the tests rather than a list somebody keeps.

They are the RequirementState enum. bin/cli requirements:check cannot fail on open or not guarded, since both are legitimate. bin/cli unresolved:list reads them out instead, together with the decision about each. That is a todo that names the id, or a judged: date that says a session read the entry and left it as it is. See judging one. Nothing in requirements/ reaches the order of the work on its own; that listing is the whole of the tie.