Long-Task Acceptance Checklist
Before assigning a long-running task to a model, define its acceptance criteria, then receive a delivery report showing passed items and rework items with supporting evidence.
When a product lead is ready to assign a long-running task spanning web pages, documents, and code repositories to a model, they first provide the goal, available materials, and delivery deadline. The system turns that natural-language request into an acceptance checklist: required files, facts that must be cited, directories the model may modify, and failure conditions that trigger rework.
The lead edits each item before authorizing work. As the model runs, the task page links every commitment to its corresponding artifact—for example, a commit, test screenshot, data source, or web snapshot. If the model touches a protected file, the task pauses for confirmation.
Once delivery is complete, the product checks each item against the rules agreed in advance. Passed items include a file link, test result, or source citation; failed items state exactly what is missing and send only that portion back to the model for rework, rather than restarting the entire task.
The first version can focus on work that changes a repository and produces supporting documentation, with robust code checks, file-scope controls, and fact citations. A product lead would still personally confirm aesthetic judgment, strategic trade-offs, and open-ended creative work.
Why now
OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra for end-to-end work on September 3; as observed on September 5, it ranked No. 1 in Product Hunt’s new-product feed. S1 S2 As models take on longer, cross-tool tasks, leads are more likely to face missed requirements, out-of-scope changes, and scattered delivery evidence.
Target user
The core user is a product or technical lead assigning repository-level work to coding agents. They need this checklist most when a task spans code, documentation, and external research: verbal requirements are easily lost during long execution, and tracing them one by one afterward is slow. Teams may also use several agents at once, so their acceptance rules cannot depend on any one model’s interface.
Minimal entry point
Start with GitHub repositories and the OpenAI Responses API. Use structured outputs to generate acceptance items with fields for the artifact, verification method, evidence type, and protected paths. Once the lead confirms them, hand the task to a coding agent. S2 The executor uses git diff to identify changed files and runs the repository’s existing tests and checks. For web-based facts, store the URL, retrieval time, and text excerpt without independently judging source authority. The acceptance engine should prioritize deterministic rules, such as file existence, directory-boundary violations, test exit codes, and missing citations. Flag subjective quality for human confirmation rather than creating false certainty through model scoring. For rework, generate only failed items and their associated evidence while retaining artifacts that already passed.
Punching above its weight
Find initial users among development teams that publicly use AGENTS.md, complex CI, or multi-agent workflows. Launch a GitHub App that automatically creates a “commitments and evidence” review page for pull requests. Open-source the checklist format and command-line validator so teams can try it without migrating agents. Publish technical postmortems around real failure cases—out-of-scope file changes, skipped tests, or broken citations—and provide rule templates that teams can import directly.
Competitors & gaps
- OpenAI CodexGoogle
- Codex can already read repositories, modify files, and run tests in an isolated environment. When a task is complete, it commits the changes and provides terminal logs and test results. Users can also request further changes or create a pull request. S3 This covers much of the post-execution evidence workflow. The gap is that acceptance criteria still largely live in prompts, repository documentation, and manual review. Before work starts, a lead cannot confirm each deliverable, fact source, and protected directory individually. Existing evidence also does not naturally map to a business acceptance checklist. When one item fails, users usually have to describe the rework scope again. The opportunity is not to replace coding agents, but to provide the delegation and acceptance layer in front of them. It must turn standards into an editable structure, then file commits, tests, and citations against each item.
- LangSmithGoogle
- LangSmith already provides datasets, execution traces, and multiple evaluators. Teams can score work through human review, code rules, or model judges, and add failed traces to datasets. S4 It is well suited to evaluating model applications and comparing versions. Its core objects are run records, samples, and scores—not a product lead’s one-off, cross-tool delegation. Users must still translate business goals into datasets, evaluation functions, and scoring criteria themselves. File boundaries, web evidence, and approval checkpoints are not default interactions either. For engineers outside evaluation work, setup may cost more than the task itself. This product could start with a natural-language acceptance checklist and connect directly to repository artifacts. It should also preserve the ability to export traces to LangSmith, rather than rebuilding mature evaluation infrastructure.
How it makes money
Charge subscriptions per active repository. The individual plan covers one repository and basic acceptance checks; the team plan adds approval roles, rule templates, and audit trails. Customers pay model-usage costs separately so long-running tasks do not erode subscription revenue.
The case against
Reliably turning natural language into executable criteria can itself misread the lead’s intent. Rules that are too strict will pause work too often, while rules that are too loose will not prevent out-of-scope changes. The link between evidence and an acceptance item can also be misleading—for example, a passing test may not cover the actual change. Web snapshots introduce storage, copyright, and sensitive-information handling burdens. Supporting multiple agents also requires normalized task states, log formats, and interruption semantics. Without dependency analysis, selective rework can break parts that already passed. Teams will still need to confirm subjective quality manually; automated acceptance cannot replace code review. If users will not maintain an acceptance checklist before work begins, the product devolves into a more complicated task template.