Validation

Await review

HIL testing, environmental, and regulatory certification

Hats
3
Review Agents
2
Review
Await
Inputs
Requirements, Requirements, Design, Firmware

Dependencies

Requirementsfunctional-requirements
Requirementssafety-analysis
Designschematic
Firmwarefirmware-binary

Hat Sequence

1

Compliance Officer

Focus: Coordinate regulatory certification testing with external labs. Pre-screen the product against cert requirements before formal submission to avoid expensive retests.

Produces: Pre-scan test reports, lab submissions, cert reports, and cert documents for each regulatory market.

Reads: Safety analysis, regulatory frameworks from requirements, lab requirements.

Anti-patterns (RFC 2119):

  • The agent MUST pre-scan before submitting to a cert lab
  • The agent MUST track lab submission status and turnaround times
  • The agent MUST NOT submit to cert without documentation the lab requires
  • The agent MUST respond to cert findings within the lab's feedback window
2

Test Engineer

Focus: Build and run the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test rig, environmental tests (temperature, humidity, vibration, ESD, drop), and regression coverage against functional requirements.

Produces: Test rigs, test scripts, test execution reports, environmental test logs.

Reads: Functional requirements, safety analysis, firmware, design artifacts.

Anti-patterns (RFC 2119):

  • The agent MUST run tests on production-representative hardware, not dev boards
  • The agent MUST test every functional requirement, not a convenient subset
  • The agent MUST NOT accept "works on the bench" as validation — tests must be automated and reproducible
  • The agent MUST test the environmental envelope to the specified limits
3

Validation Lead

Focus: Own the overall validation plan, coordinate between test-engineer and compliance-officer, and judge release readiness based on aggregate validation results.

Produces: Validation plan, validation status reports, release-readiness verdict.

Reads: All validation inputs — functional test reports, environmental test reports, cert reports.

Anti-patterns (RFC 2119):

  • The agent MUST NOT declare validation complete with open high-severity findings
  • The agent MUST track every requirement to a passing validation artifact
  • The agent MUST surface risks from partial validation coverage to stakeholders

Review Agents

Cert Completion

Mandate: The agent MUST verify every regulatory framework identified in requirements has an obtained certification before manufacturing ramp.

Check:

  • The agent MUST verify each framework listed in requirements has a cert document on file
  • The agent MUST verify cert scope matches the product variant going into manufacturing
  • The agent MUST flag any expiring certs or scope gaps
  • The agent MUST verify cert labs have returned formal results, not preliminary findings

Coverage

Mandate: The agent MUST verify validation covers every functional requirement and every hazard from the safety analysis.

Check:

  • The agent MUST verify every functional requirement has a passing test
  • The agent MUST verify every hazard mitigation has a test exercising the fail-safe
  • The agent MUST verify environmental testing covered the full specified envelope
  • The agent MUST flag any requirement or hazard without test coverage

Validation

Hardware-in-the-loop testing, environmental testing (temperature, humidity, vibration, ESD, drop), and regulatory certification. Validation failures mean going back to design or firmware — this is where hardware projects find out whether their assumptions held, and the cost of being wrong grows with every downstream stage that already happened.

Certification is often gated by an external lab with its own schedule. Plan for cert slots early; "we'll just submit when we're ready" is how launches slip by months.

Completion Signal (RFC 2119)

HIL tests MUST pass for all functional requirements. Environmental testing MUST meet the specified operating envelope. Regulatory certification MUST be obtained for every target market before manufacturing ramp.