Testing and troubleshooting

Acceptance layers

1. Schema and migration idempotency.
2. Tenant/access invariants.
3. Service health, readiness, capabilities and domain contracts.
4. Authorized and unauthorized API behavior.
5. Worker cycles and queue/dead-letter behavior.
6. Authenticated dashboard route rendering.
7. Provider sandbox observation with evidence.
8. Dry-run activation and rollback.
9. Tracking consent, deduplication, retention and privacy requests.
10. Export, report delivery and expiring share links.

Acceptance matrix

Layer	Positive path	Required negative/failure path	Evidence
Migration	Fresh apply and existing-volume upgrade	Repeat/idempotency or reviewed failure	Applied version and integrity query
Access	Authorized workspace read/write	Cross-workspace, expired key and missing permission	Status plus audit event where required
Service	Health, readiness, capability and representative domain call	Misconfiguration and dependency failure	Response schema and logs/metrics
Observation	Provider answer/evidence stored	Rate limit, timeout, partial run and retry	Run manifest, snapshots and failure counts
Usage	Provider event and pricing provenance stored in the same workspace	Cross-workspace provider, missing rate, mixed currency and metering persistence failure	Usage record, pricing source and operator signal
Intelligence	Versioned metric with sample/confidence	Low sample, unresolved entity and definition change	Metric snapshot and evidence links
Action	Approval, dry run, execute and verify	Rejection, duplicate, policy block, failure and rollback	Immutable action events
Publication	Preview, publish and read-after-write verify	Dead letter, unknown external state and rollback	Publication attempts/external reference
Tracking	Allowed-origin consented event	Invalid token/origin, denied consent and duplicate	Acceptance/deduplication counters
Attribution	Eligible touchpoints and outcomes	Low coverage and unattributed outcome	Model, window and confidence
Reporting	Generate, deliver and download	Delivery retry/dead letter and expired share	Immutable report and delivery attempts

Reference end-to-end journey

1. Create or select a Tenant and Workspace.
2. Add brand, website and competitor targets.
3. Configure and test a provider.
4. Create topics, prompts and a prompt set.
5. Run observations and inspect evidence.
6. Validate metrics, sample gates and competitive denominator.
7. Convert one finding to a recommendation and proposed action.
8. Preview and approve a content/channel change in staging.
9. Verify publication and send tracking events.
10. Re-run monitoring and inspect attribution/experiment limitations.
11. Generate export/report and test an expiring share.
12. Confirm audit, retention and privacy flows.

Common problems

No default provider

Select an active provider as workspace default. AI operations without an explicit provider fail intentionally when no default exists.

Provider is degraded

Check endpoint, model, encrypted credential/secret reference, provider capabilities, API version, rate limits and egress policy. Do not expose the secret in screenshots or logs.

Usage record is unpriced

The provider returned no total cost and the workspace provider has no applicable input, output, or web-search rate. Enter the rates from the provider contract and use the correct three-letter currency. Historical events retain the pricing result recorded at execution time; changing a provider rate does not silently rewrite them.

Web search usage is zero

Confirm that an eligible direct provider profile has web search enabled and that the provider response exposes a search-request count. Generic OpenAI-compatible/custom providers cannot assert native-search support. Some providers charge for search without returning a separate request counter; do not invent a count from citations.

Usage estimate differs from the provider invoice

Confirm model, token units, search fees, currency, negotiated rates and effective date. GEO estimates do not apply free tiers, discounts, tax or undocumented provider charges. Treat the provider invoice as authoritative.

Provider succeeded but no usage event appears

Contact your GEO Platform administrator to check for a usage-persistence error and verify that the Organization, Tenant, Workspace, and provider ownership match. A metering failure does not convert a valid provider response into a failed observation, so a successful provider call can still require a usage-ledger investigation.

Share of voice is 100%

Verify that competitor targets exist, are classified as competitors, use the same project/market/language scope and have representative prompts. Inspect sample size and confidence.

Score contains commerce concepts

Current GEO scoring must not use checkout, cart, Masterpass or Mastercard. Determine whether the term occurs only in raw discovered endpoints or in score/signals/tasks/AI recommendations. Historical reports are immutable and may retain output from an older engine version.

Tracking has no events

Check token, site status, allowed origin, HTTPS collector, consent state, event name, browser blocking and retention. A platform API key cannot replace a tracking site token.

Publication does not execute

Check connection status, secret reference, allowlist, approval, policy result, schedule, idempotency state and dead-letter reason. Preview or simulation status is not publication.

API returns 403

Confirm product access, Tenant, Workspace scope, and required permission. Resource UUIDs do not grant access.

Release evidence

A production claim should identify whether validation covered source/type checks, production build, local containers, provider sandbox, real external publication, tracking traffic and post-action attribution. These are separate milestones.

Evidence labels

Use precise release language:

• Source verified: static/source contract inspection only.
• Build verified: production build completed; no runtime claim.
• Local runtime verified: local database/services and safe e2e completed.
• Sandbox verified: real third-party sandbox credential and API exercised.
• Production verified: approved production account/destination exercised.
• Outcome verified: post-action observation/tracking data collected and interpreted with limitations.