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Rule ID: AE-SUPPRESS-003 · Severity: Informational · Category: Governance · Auto-fixable: No
AE-SUPPRESS-003 is informational only. It carries no point deduction, does not engage any score cap, and cannot itself be suppressed. It surfaces so the pattern is visible during reviews — it does not change your score.

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Why this rule

A high suppression rate is a signal that either the tool is misconfigured for this repo or the team is systematically bypassing its controls. Both patterns are worth surfacing explicitly so teams self-correct rather than silently diverge from the score. A suppression rate above 30% doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong — a freshly migrated repo may legitimately carry many accepted findings during initial calibration. The point is intentional suppression, not the absence of it.

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What triggers it

Charter computes the suppression rate after scoring: 
rate = suppressed findings / (active findings + suppressed findings)
Governance findings like AE-SUPPRESS-003 itself are excluded from the denominator to prevent a feedback loop. The finding fires when the rate exceeds 30% and at least one suppression exists.

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Examples

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Triggers

A repo with 3 active findings and 6 suppressions has a rate of 67% — AE-SUPPRESS-003 is reported. The score is unchanged. The 3 active findings still deduct normally; the 6 suppressions are already excluded from the base score.

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Does not trigger

  • A repo with 10 active findings and 1 suppression: rate = 9% — below threshold, no finding.
  • A repo with zero suppressions: zero denominator — never fires.

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How to fix

This finding is a prompt to review, not a defect to silence.
1

Audit each suppression

Open .charter-suppress.yml and review each entry. Ask: was this suppressed because the risk was genuinely evaluated and accepted — or to avoid noise?
2

Fix what can be fixed

If a suppression was added to avoid fixing a real issue, address the underlying finding and remove the suppression entry.
3

Confirm governance fields are complete

Every remaining suppression should have reason:. Permanent suppressions require approver:. Missing fields will trigger AE-SUPPRESS-001 or AE-SUPPRESS-002 independently.
4

Let the rate drop naturally

As findings are fixed and suppressions are lifted, the rate falls. No special action is needed once the denominator balance is restored.

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Score impact

None. AE-SUPPRESS-003 is excluded from the severity tally and all caps. It appears in output and in the HTML report as an informational notice, but does not affect the numeric score or gate result.

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Edge cases

A repo that has just adopted Charter may have many accepted findings under suppression during the initial calibration period. AE-SUPPRESS-003 fires as intended — it’s the prompt to review those suppressions and decide which ones to lift as the codebase improves. This is advisory, not blocking.
No. It is never counted in its own denominator and cannot be suppressed. This prevents the feedback loop where suppressing the governance finding further increases the suppression rate.

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CLI

charter explain AE-SUPPRESS-003