MS release-notes and Ticket Contract assessments; justified not-needed tiers #5

Part of Magic Suite epic MS-27629 (Shared: Enforce ticket readiness at Ready for Test and release). Decisions of David Bond, 2026-10-18.

Problem

Release notes and the Ticket Contract are not scored by the shared rubric, so the QA Dashboard and the Jira skill cannot enforce them. Documentation and Certifications also have no way to score fully when a ticket honestly needs neither.

Requested change (PanoramicData.IssueAssessment 1.2.0, additive minor bump)

• Input: the normalised issue gains releaseNotes and resolution. Both new assessments are not applicable when resolution is set and is neither Fixed nor Done.
• New assessment ReleaseNotes: applies when project is MS, every issue type including Epic. Mandatory (cap overall score at 0.79), small weight (around 6). Rules: not empty; not a placeholder (TBD, TODO, N/A, none, -, see ticket); at least 8 words; not identical to the summary ignoring case and a Product: prefix; customer-facing (no ticket keys, source paths or file names, code identifiers); no em dash; British spelling against a fixed list of common US forms; not a bare generic phrase ("Bug fix", "Various fixes").
• New assessment TicketContract: applies when project is MS and type is not Epic. Mandatory, cap 0.79. Classified criteria (all statuses): acceptance-criteria section exists, every criterion starts with MUST, SHOULD or MAY (plain, bold, bracketed or followed by a colon), at least one MUST. Verification Evidence (only from Ready for Test onwards): h2. Verification Evidence, optionally suffixed (Retrospective), with the coverage table, a Reachability block, a "Not covered" block and Suggested QA route: A, B, C or D.
• Justified "not needed" tiers: Documentation and Certifications each gain a full-score tier for an explicit statement with a reason (No documentation change: <reason>, No certification question: <reason>). A bare "N/A" does not qualify. These apply to every project.
• Both new checks apply to project MS only, so OPS and PS scores do not move.

Tests and publish

Rubric tests cover each rule, MS-only applicability, the Epic exemption from TicketContract, the status-dependent Evidence requirement and the 0.79 cap. Publish with the repository's Publish.ps1.

Acceptance criteria

1. MUST: ReleaseNotes and TicketContract assessments exist with the rules above and cap the overall score at 79 when failed.
2. MUST: Both are not applicable outside project MS and for undelivered resolutions; TicketContract is not applicable to Epics.
3. MUST: Documentation and Certifications give a full score for a justified "not needed" statement and not for a bare "N/A".
4. SHOULD: Tests cover each rule and the status-dependent Evidence requirement.
5. MAY: Findings name the specific US spelling found.