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Support supplementary specification documents in trifecta audit#50

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Alan-Jowett merged 2 commits intomicrosoft:mainfrom
Alan-Jowett:support-supplementary-specs
Mar 20, 2026
Merged

Support supplementary specification documents in trifecta audit#50
Alan-Jowett merged 2 commits intomicrosoft:mainfrom
Alan-Jowett:support-supplementary-specs

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Closes #47

Adds an optional additional_specs parameter so users can provide supplementary specifications that requirements reference but aren't part of the core trifecta.

Changes:

  • Template: New additional_specs param and input section, plus instruction for handling external references
  • Protocol Phase 1: New steps to inventory supplementary specs and scan for references to unprovided external documents
  • Protocol Phase 6: Coverage summary now reports missing external references

Motivation: The Sonde case study found 4 ad-hoc audit issues from safe-bpf-interpreter.md — a spec outside all component trifectas. The audit had no way to know it was missing relevant context. Now it will either use the supplementary spec (if provided) or flag that the core documents reference external specs not included in the audit.

Add optional additional_specs parameter to audit-traceability template.
The protocol's Phase 1 now:
- Inventories supplementary specs for cross-reference verification
- Scans core documents for references to external specifications not
  provided, reporting them in the coverage summary

This catches the case where a component's full spec surface is larger
than its requirements/design/validation trifecta (e.g., Sonde's
safe-bpf-interpreter.md was outside all component trifectas, causing
4 ad-hoc audit issues with ~50+ gaps to be invisible to the audit).

Closes microsoft#47

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings March 20, 2026 15:39
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Pull request overview

Adds support for supplementary specification documents to improve traceability audits when core trifecta docs reference external specs that may be missing.

Changes:

  • Adds an additional_specs parameter and template section for supplementary specifications.
  • Updates Phase 1 to inventory supplementary specs and detect references to unprovided external documents.
  • Extends the coverage summary to report missing external references.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

File Description
templates/audit-traceability.md Adds additional_specs parameter, input section, and instructions for handling supplementary specs and missing external references.
protocols/reasoning/traceability-audit.md Adds Phase 1 steps for supplementary spec inventory + external reference scanning and reports missing references in Phase 6 summary.

- additional_specs param: 'omit or leave empty' instead of 'none'
- Input section: 'ignore if empty' hint for LLM
- External ref scan: 'provided documents' instead of hardcoding
  'requirements and design'

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
@Alan-Jowett Alan-Jowett requested a review from Copilot March 20, 2026 16:01
@Alan-Jowett Alan-Jowett merged commit 5569c81 into microsoft:main Mar 20, 2026
2 of 3 checks passed
@Alan-Jowett Alan-Jowett deleted the support-supplementary-specs branch March 20, 2026 16:09
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Support supplementary specification documents in trifecta audit

2 participants