---
id: operating.build-policies-rubrics
title: Build policies and rubrics
summary: Materialize expert-grounded behavior rules, applicability, and binary criteria in Correctness Governance.
kind: task
product_area: operating_manual
status: stable
updated: 2026-08-22
canonical: /docs/operating-manual/build-policies-and-rubrics
---

# Build policies and rubrics

Build a governed policy and its rubrics when specialist judgment is clear enough to become reusable across cases, Contributions, and benchmark evaluations.

## Prerequisites

- Attributable expert judgment or another accountable source of authority.
- Representative and boundary Cases.
- A clear behavior rule and enough context to define applicability.
- Access to Correctness Governance.

## Steps

1. Inspect the Expert Contribution, source material, cases, and checkpoints that support the proposed rule.
2. Write the policy as expected behavior, not as a score or implementation technique.
3. Define applicability: the situations, inputs, or conditions where the policy controls.
4. Link representative cases that show ordinary, passing, failing, and boundary behavior.
5. Create binary rubrics that test observable parts of the policy.
6. Split independent criteria so each failure remains diagnosable.
7. Inspect approval, activity, provenance, and proposed application state in Correctness Governance.
8. Confirm the benchmark version boundary before using the standard in evaluation interpretation.

## Object and state changes

This task creates or updates project Policies, applicability, Rubrics, case links, activity, approval context, and contribution provenance. It can affect future benchmark versions and evaluations. Historical Runs retain the correctness boundary recorded when they ran.

## Success criteria

- The policy expresses one reusable behavior rule and its authority.
- Applicability distinguishes relevant from irrelevant Cases.
- Rubrics define observable pass and fail evidence.
- Linked cases demonstrate meaningful boundaries.
- Suggested, contributed, and governed states are not conflated.
- Later evaluation results can trace a failure back to the rule and evidence.

## Common failure modes

- Turning a source document directly into a policy without expert interpretation.
- Writing a policy so broad that applicability cannot be inspected.
- Combining unrelated criteria into one rubric.
- Treating contribution completion as automatic governance.
- Comparing Runs across a changed policy or rubric boundary without acknowledging it.

{% example-demo title="Example: exception escalation standard" %}
An expert confirms that unresolved eligibility exceptions must be escalated. The policy states the rule and its applicability. One rubric checks that the response avoids promising an exception; another checks the correct escalation path. Linked Cases include both ordinary and conflicting-source situations.
{% /example-demo %}

## Related reference pages

{% related-card-grid title="Related reference pages" %}
- [Correctness Governance](/docs/correctness-governance)
- [Policies and Rubrics](/docs/correctness-governance/policies-and-rubrics)
- [Contributed Artifacts](/docs/expert-contributions/contributed-artifacts)
{% /related-card-grid %}

## Related troubleshooting pages

{% related-card-grid title="Related troubleshooting pages" %}
- [Overly broad policies](/docs/troubleshooting/overly-broad-policies)
- [Weak applicability logic](/docs/troubleshooting/weak-applicability-logic)
- [Overlapping rubrics](/docs/troubleshooting/overlapping-rubrics)
{% /related-card-grid %}

## Source confidence

Code-backed: current policy and rubric list/detail surfaces support governed artifacts, links, approval context, and contribution provenance used in this task.