Skip to content

Stack Standards

Stack standards are the VCQA-owned units that can become full, versioned rubrics. They describe deployable shapes, not isolated frameworks.

Authored Stack Rubrics

Authored Cross-Cutting Rubrics

Cross-cutting rubrics are authored standards too, but they are cataloged through item pages because they apply across many stack shapes rather than defining a deployable stack by themselves.

Published Aliases

Planned Stack Charters

Planned charters are ranked by maturity state, not listed as one undifferentiated backlog. A charter's state says how close it is to a versioned rubric, and every charter page carries the reason for its own state.

Candidate rubric

Numbered candidate rules carry severity, required evidence, and an exception policy. A versioned rubric can be cut from this page once its promotion criteria are met.

  • Node CLI Internal Tool: noninteractive exit-code contract, credential resolution order, prod/staging safety defaults, structured output mode, SDK reuse instead of API duplication.
  • TypeScript SDK: export map and declaration quality, API contract freshness, credential boundary, typed error model, consumer compatibility tests.
  • GitHub Action Package: action.yml metadata completeness, minimum token permissions, input validation, pinned runtime/dependency policy, release tag policy.

Draft charter

Scope, composition, detection signals, and the VCQA-owned rule surface are recorded, but there are no judgeable candidate rules yet. Useful for planning, not for review.

  • Tauri React Desktop: Tauri command/capability boundaries, keychain/secret storage, file-system watch safety, desktop packaging and signing, frontend/backend contract typing.
  • Zensical KB Site: Markdown source is the source of truth, generated site is ignored, published URLs are stable, source references are tracked, docs drift checks where mirrors exist.
  • Accessibility: WCAG and ARIA acceptance gates mapped to scanner evidence, keyboard, focus, semantics, and contrast checks by UI stack, manual-review exception policy for accessibility findings.
  • Dependency Hygiene: lockfile and package-manager pinning, install script and dependency provenance review, audit, license, update, runtime, and exception evidence in CI.

Backlog

The stack shape is recorded so gap reports name the right standard. Nobody is working toward a rubric, and nothing on the page is judgeable.

  • VS Code Extension Package: activation event scope, workspace trust behavior, command and webview boundaries, marketplace metadata, extension test coverage.

What makes a stack standard

A stack standard should exist when a combination creates rules that no single upstream source owns. For example, Cloudflare D1 docs explain migrations, and GitHub Actions docs explain workflows, but VCQA must define the combined rule that CI applies D1 migrations to a clean local database before production promotion.

Independent Assessments

Every stack page has a dated assessment report under Standards Assessments. These reports judge whether the page is clear, evidence-backed, checkable, and ready to define or support a full rubric.

For the complete public map across stack standards, cross-cutting standards, stack items, examples, templates, and reports, use the Standards Graph.