Requirement Traceability
The ability to trace each requirement to the design elements, code, tests, and verification evidence that confirm it — in both directions. Bidirectional traceability is mandatory in ISO 26262, IEC 61508, DO-178C, and the EU Machinery Regulation 2027 audit path.
Why It Matters
Traceability is the single most-fragile artifact in safety engineering. Teams spend significant engineering effort maintaining a matrix that goes stale on every refactor. Tools that promise automatic traceability either over-promise (broken in practice) or under-deliver (still requires manual stitching).
How Roboticks Implements It
The @confirms("REQ-014") decorator on a pytest or ROBOTICKS_CONFIRMS in a gtest writes the linkage into JUnit user_properties. The platform reads it and creates a RequirementLink row pinned to the test outcome on a specific commit. The matrix is derived, not authored — it can't go stale because there's no separate artifact to maintain.