RFP Requirements Specification
Vendor behavioral requirements with measurable syndrome thresholds. Replace vague quality language in procurement documents with specific, auditable standards that vendors can actually respond to — and that you can actually enforce.
Why “ensure AI accuracy” is not a requirement
Standard procurement language for AI systems borrows from software quality requirements: “the system shall be accurate,” “responses shall be helpful and relevant,” “the AI shall perform reliably.” These clauses have no measurable standard, no test methodology, and no enforcement mechanism. A vendor can pass any compliance audit against them because they define nothing.
The six Core Six syndromes give procurement teams six specific, measurable behavioral failure modes to specify against. A requirement like “Capability Masking incidence must not exceed [X]% on the customer-specific evaluation suite” is auditable: you can run the test, count the failures, and either the vendor passes or they don’t.
Mandatory vs. target thresholds
The template distinguishes two tiers of requirement: Mandatory (must meet all — failure means rejection) and Target (meet at least 2 of 3 — allows trade-offs within a band).
Mandatory thresholds apply to the three syndromes with near-zero tolerance: Capability Masking (the system must not fabricate its own actions), Plausible Helpfulness (the system must not confabulate with confidence), and Hollow Completions (the system must not falsely declare tasks complete). These are the syndromes where any meaningful incidence creates direct user harm or institutional liability.
Target thresholds apply to the three syndromes where some incidence is operationally tolerable and domain-specific: Built-Not-Connected, Responsibility Diffusion, and Surface Compliance. A software development context may accept higher BNC incidence because developers can catch integration failures; a customer service context may accept higher SC incidence for some instruction types but not others. Target thresholds create a zone of acceptable performance rather than a binary pass/fail.
Exception — safety-critical deployments: Surface Compliance should be promoted to Mandatory for any system where constraint violations carry safety, legal, or compliance consequences (healthcare, financial, legal contexts). In those cases, move SC to the Mandatory block and apply near-zero tolerance.
Copy and adapt
Insert into the technical requirements section of your RFP. Pair with the Vendor Deliverables section — requirements without a specified evidence format are impossible to evaluate.
