Outside-person demo walkthrough (usability gate)

[ChelseaKR]

This issue exists to satisfy one specific gate: docs/ROADMAP.md blocks all new connectors, evidence families, and data categories until an outside person runs the synthetic demo without help and says whether the receipt answers their exit question. If you can spare 20–30 minutes and haven't worked on ExitDrill's code, you're exactly who this needs.

Multiple independent walkthroughs are welcome — please don't read other comments on this issue before doing your own run, so your answers stay yours and not primed by someone else's.

You qualify if

• You're comfortable on a command line (can run git clone and make).
• You have not written or reviewed ExitDrill's source.
• Ideally, you've personally been on the hook for a real SaaS export, vendor migration, or "can we actually leave this system" question — but general technical curiosity is enough too.

Ground rules

• Don't ask the maintainer for help mid-walkthrough. That defeats the point. If you get stuck, write down exactly where and what you expected instead — that's the data this gate needs, not a problem to route around.
• Use only what's in this repository (README, linked docs). No outside explanation.
• If you're stuck on one step for more than ~15 minutes, stop, note it, and move to the next part rather than trial-and-error your way through indefinitely.
• It's fine to fail, get confused, or conclude the receipt doesn't answer your question. A stuck point or a "no" is exactly as useful as a clean run.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.12+
• uv
• A terminal and a browser

Part A — run the demo (required)

git clone https://github.com/ChelseaKR/exitdrill.git
cd exitdrill
make install
make demo-compare

• The install step finished without errors.
• make demo-compare printed a four-line summary ending in something like:

  clean: structurally_restorable (0 loss signals)
  lossy: not_structurally_restorable (5 loss signals)
  changed dimensions: entities, relationships, attachments, permissions, audit_events
  reports: examples/synthetic-crm/out/report.html and examples/synthetic-crm-lossy/out/report.html
  

Part B — read the reports (required)

Open both files in a browser:

• examples/synthetic-crm/out/report.html

• examples/synthetic-crm-lossy/out/report.html

• You looked at both reports before answering Part C.

Part C — answer without looking anything up again (required, this is the actual point)

Answer these from what you just saw — not from re-reading the README, and not from asking anyone:

1. In your own words: what does structurally_restorable mean? What does not_structurally_restorable mean?
2. Looking only at the reports, what specifically differs between the clean run and the lossy run?
3. Think of a real export or migration you've personally been responsible for, or been burned by. Briefly, what happened?
4. If this receipt existed for that real export, what decision — if any — would it let you make or defend?
5. What would it not tell you, that you'd still want to know before treating a vendor export as a working exit?
6. Where, if anywhere, did you get stuck, confused, or have to guess? Quote the exact command or sentence that didn't do what you expected.
7. Total wall-clock time, start to finish.

Part D — optional, only if Parts A–C left you curious

Not required for this gate — skip straight to reporting back if you're done.

• The exitdrill CLI walkthrough runs each step (validate, drill, verify, report, compare) individually instead of through make.
• The Directus source canary and CiviCRM target canary are separate, narrower exercises (make demo-directus-canary, make demo-civicrm-target-canary).

Report back

Paste this, filled in, as a comment on this issue:

### Outside-tester walkthrough

- Background: <e.g. "ops manager, migrated off a CRM last year" / "no relevant background, just curious">
- Part A: pass / stuck — <if stuck, where>
- Part B: done
- Part C:
  1. structurally_restorable means: ...
     not_structurally_restorable means: ...
  2. What differed: ...
  3. My real export/migration: ...
  4. Decision the receipt would support: ...
  5. What it doesn't tell me: ...
  6. Where I got stuck: ...
  7. Total time: ...
- Part D (optional): skipped / did the CLI walkthrough / did a canary — notes: ...

Thanks for spending the time — this is the one thing standing between this project and its next milestone.

[ChelseaKR]

Triaged 2026-09-06 against origin/main at 857a411. Still open, still correctly help wanted, and re-verified as runnable — with one small drift in the published expected output that is worth fixing before another tester hits it.

The demo still reproduces. Ran the issue's Part A verbatim in a clean checkout:

$ make install && make demo-compare
clean: structurally_restorable (0 loss signals)
lossy: not_structurally_restorable (5 loss signals)
changed dimensions: entities, relationships, attachments, permissions, audit_events
reports: examples/synthetic-crm/out/report.html and examples/synthetic-crm-lossy/out/report.html
comparison report: examples/synthetic-crm/out/comparison.html
timeline report: examples/synthetic-crm/out/history.html

All four lines the issue publishes are present and byte-identical, including 5 loss signals and the full changed-dimension list, so nobody following this will be misled about the substance. make install and make demo-compare both exit 0.

The drift: Part A's second checkbox says the run "printed a four-line summary ending in reports: ...". The summary is now six lines and ends with timeline report: ... — the comparison and timeline reports were added after the issue was written. A careful outside tester, told to check a box about a four-line summary that ends somewhere it does not, is being asked to answer a question with no right answer, on the very first checkbox of a usability gate. That is the kind of thing this gate exists to catch, so it should not be the gate's own first impression.

I have not edited the issue body: the wording is the maintainer's, and this is a walkthrough script an outside person is meant to follow literally. The one-word suggestion, if wanted, is "printed a summary whose first four lines are:" with the four lines unchanged.

Why nothing else was done here. This is a person gate by construction and no agent can open it — docs/ROADMAP.md says so explicitly ("An outside person, not the maintainer and not an agent"), and it blocks #109, #110, #111 and half of #113. An agent writing a walkthrough report here would defeat the only thing the issue measures.

Prepared with AI assistance; reviewed before submission.