What should a buyer request in a sample before committing to a pilot?

Request a connected sample that your team can inspect as a complete episode, with the following review materials.

- A customer request and every record needed to resolve its intended scope. - A readable explanation of the business assumptions encoded in the sample. - A runnable path from initial state to an accepted terminal outcome. - A deliberately failing trace with the reason it should fail. - An inventory of mocked services and omitted operational behaviour. - A list of unresolved design questions requiring buyer decisions. - Acceptance criteria tied to the buyer's intended environment use.

The review should produce decisions, not just impressions about whether the records look convincing. A builder might accept the action model but find that a required external acknowledgement has no representation. That finding can become a specific pilot requirement before more content is generated.

MirrorFirm could shape a sample around the buyer's chosen customer change and integration boundary. The useful next step is to walk the connected episode through the intended runtime and record where assumptions, missing actions or evaluation criteria prevent a defensible result. Those findings provide a practical basis for scoping further work.