Frontier

Understanding an assessment

Last updated 6 September 2026

PR comment and dashboard

After frontier upload, GitHub Actions upserts one aggregate-only PR comment. The same fields appear on the run-detail page. Entity IDs and warehouse row values are never included in the comment.

Values below that describe missed entities, mismatched rows, failed validations, or FULL_REBUILD_REQUIRED are correctness problems. Rows avoided, candidate no-ops, and FULL_REBUILD_RECOMMENDED are efficiency warnings unless paired with a failed check.

Field guide

FieldMeaningSignal
Assessment statusPASSED or FAILED (comment headline).Correctness if failed.
ModelTarget mart from the pinned semantic manifest.Context.
Assessment typeSQL-change, CDC, or combined. CDC runs also show provider and batch checkpoint.Context.
SQL operatorFirst classified change kind, such as FILTER_CHANGED.Context.
Changed source rowsSource rows whose predicate or event membership changed.Context. "Not measured" when a full rebuild skipped discovery.
Event-derived candidatesEntities routed from source events or CDC logical events.Context.
SQL-change candidatesEntities selected by compiled SQL-change predicates.Context.
Candidate unionDeduplicated candidate keys (event ∪ SQL-change).Context. Conservative set.
Confirmed changesCandidates whose mart output actually changed.Context. Smaller than the candidate set when no-ops exist.
Candidate no-opsCandidates whose mart row did not change.Efficiency. Not a miss.
Missed entitiesFull-reference changes absent from the candidate set.Correctness problem.
Full and targeted row countsFull entity count versus frontier/candidate recomputes. SQL comments may show before → after row count.Context. "Not measured" when rebuild skipped execution.
Rows avoidedPercent of the full population not recomputed.Efficiency.
Validation differencesSum of failed check difference counts.Correctness if greater than zero.
Evidence levelnone, aggregates, equivalence, or empirically validated.Empirically validated is evidence for this dataset, not a formal proof.
Impact compilation statusCOMPILED or FULL_REBUILD_REQUIRED per modified model.FULL_REBUILD_REQUIRED is fail-closed correctness.
Impact execution statusEXECUTED, NOT_RUN, NOT_EVALUATED, or FAILED.FAILED is a correctness/runtime problem. NOT_RUN is expected when rebuild is required.
Manifest version / fingerprintPinned snapshot used for this run, not the later active mapping.Context. Mismatch with dbt is a correctness setup issue.
Base and PR artifact fingerprintsHashes of the compared compiled SQL artifacts.Context. Traceability.
Targeted repair safetySafe, not safe, or skipped. Safe requires zero mismatched final rows, zero missed entities, and no required/recommended rebuild.Not safe is a correctness problem. Skipped follows rebuild policy.
Full-backfill decisionRequired, recommended, or not required.Required is fail-closed. Recommended is an efficiency warning.