Conformance Suite & Published Count

Status: stable · Scope: the evidence and policy execution paths.

Talon publishes a single, reproducible number: the count of passing tests across the two paths that carry its core guarantees — the evidence path (how records are built, signed, exported, and verified) and the policy path (how requests are classified, routed, and allowed or denied).

The number is meant to be checkable, not impressive. Anyone can reproduce it from a clean checkout, and CI prints it on every run. The authoritative value is whatever make conformance reports for the commit you are looking at.

Reproduce it

make conformance

Example output:

Conformance: 317 passing tests across evidence + policy paths (./internal/policy/... ./internal/evidence/...)

The target runs go test -count=1 -run . -v over ./internal/policy/... and ./internal/evidence/..., then counts the --- PASS: lines emitted by the Go test runner. That count includes both top-level test functions and table-driven subtests, so each named case is counted once. -count=1 disables the test cache, so the number is computed fresh every time. If any test fails, the target exits non-zero and prints the failure tail instead of a count.

What is in scope

The count aggregates the test files in the two packages below. The list is descriptive — the suite is simply "every test in these two packages", so new tests raise the number automatically without touching this document.

Policy path — internal/policy

File	Covers
engine_test.go	Policy engine evaluate/decision logic
gateway_engine_test.go	Gateway-mode policy evaluation (model allowlists, cost, data-tier egress)
golden_test.go	Golden policy decisions against testdata/ fixtures
loader_test.go	.talon.yaml policy loading and validation
routing_policy_test.go	Tier-based model routing decisions
classifier_convert_test.go	Classifier → policy-input conversion
proxy_test.go	Proxy-mode policy enforcement
openclaw_gaps_test.go	Regression cases for known governance gaps
metrics_test.go	Policy decision metrics

Evidence path — internal/evidence

File	Covers
store_test.go	Evidence record build, persist, query, tenant scoping
signed_export_test.go	Signed JSON/NDJSON export and offline verification
integrity_spec_test.go	Round-trip of the evidence integrity spec
schema_compat_test.go	Backward compatibility of the record schema
export_test.go	CSV/JSON export shape
metrics_test.go	Evidence write metrics

Adjacent suites (counted separately)

The embedded OPA/Rego policies have their own test suite that runs under the opa toolchain rather than go test, so it is not included in the Go conformance count. Run it with make opa-test. Integration and end-to-end tiers (make test-integration, make test-e2e) exercise the same paths through the running binary and are likewise tracked separately.

What the number means — and what it does not

• It does mean: the evidence and policy code paths have this many passing, deterministic checks that anyone can re-run, and a regression that breaks one of them fails CI.
• It does not mean: that the suite is exhaustive, that it covers every configuration, or that a high count by itself demonstrates a compliance outcome. Talon produces supporting controls and evidence; coverage and limitations are documented in LIMITATIONS.md.

The count is a floor that grows as tests are added; it is not a marketing target. Treat the live output of make conformance as the source of truth.