A proof of concept should reduce uncertainty about the buyer's hardest operating conditions. Recreating a vendor's prepared happy path does not accomplish that.
Use representative complexity
Bring specializations, keys, reuse, subject schemes, filters, large assets, and difficult publications. Use your own representative content and define expected results before testing. Resolve keys and reused content in the relevant map contexts and filtering profiles; storing the XML alone does not demonstrate correct processing.
Exercise failures
In an isolated evaluation environment, break catalogs, omit targets, create conflicts, interrupt jobs, and test authorization boundaries with agreed test accounts. Check that diagnostics identify the cause and affected content, unauthorized access is rejected, and failed or incomplete jobs cannot be mistaken for successful publications.
Include operations
Deploy, upgrade, monitor, back up, restore, and investigate a failed build. Verify that a restored environment can retrieve the expected content, configuration, and artifacts. Record deployment assumptions and any steps that require vendor assistance.
Test entry and exit
Import realistic packages and export a usable repository with its processing dependencies. Include native XML, binary assets, catalogs, grammars, validation rules, publishing profiles, and required plugins or a manifest identifying how to obtain them. Identify licensing or external-service dependencies. Validate and publish the export outside the source platform to test portability. Record every manual intervention.
Require observable evidence
Do not settle for a verbal description when the platform can demonstrate the behavior. Ask for an API response, manifest, exported package, audit event, diagnostic record, or reproducible comparison. Capture the exact version and environment used in the evaluation so a successful result cannot later be attributed to a different configuration.
Evaluate the operating life
Selection teams naturally focus on implementation and initial authoring. Extend the scenario to year three: a toolchain upgrade, a new specialization, a departed administrator, a regulatory inquiry, a migration, and an old release that must be rebuilt. A platform that handles those moments clearly will usually cost less organizational energy than one with a longer feature list.
The ForgeDITA position
ForgeDITA is being built around explicit contracts, native content, contextual DITA semantics, and evidence that can be inspected. ForgeDITA is in active beta for controlled evaluation. Review the product status and public conformance statement to distinguish implemented behavior from the architectural target. Complete DITA 1.3 resolution, DITA 2.0 support, and final production Oxygen add-on acceptance are not claimed. The criteria in this article are evaluation requests, not a claim that ForgeDITA has passed every test or completed production acceptance.