Test for regulatory compliance: GDPR/CMP consent verification, Google Consent Mode v2, Global Privacy Control (GPC), CCPA/US state opt-out, EU AI Act Article 50 transparency, Better Ads Standards, and cookie-inventory auditing. Covers automated consent-flow testing, third-party script blocking befor

<objective Compliance is binary: a single analytics cookie that fires before consent, or a "Reject all" rendered as a tiny grey link, is a violation no matter how polished the rest of the flow looks. Manual quarterly audits miss the regression a developer shipped on a Tuesday. This skill automates the technical checks — consent state, script blocking, cookie attributes, GPC, Consent Mode v2, AI Act disclosure — so configuration drift fails CI instead of a regulator's inbox. </objective Discovery Questions First, check for .agents/qa project context.md in the project root — it carries applicable regulations, CMP details, ad networks, and geographic scope. Skip any question already answered there. If it is missing, suggest creating one with the qa project context skill. Applicable regulations Which privacy and platform regulations apply? This sets the entire test matrix. EU: GDPR, ePrivacy Directive (cookies), Digital Services Act (DSA, applied 17 Feb 2024), EU AI Act (prohibitions + AI literacy live since 2 Feb 2025; GPAI obligations + penalties since 2 Aug 2025; Article 50 transparency from 2 Aug 2026 — high risk obligations postponed, see below). US: CCPA/CPRA plus comprehensive state laws now active in ~20 states (Texas TDPSA, Indiana CDPA eff. 1 Jan 2026, Delaware DPDPA, Nebraska NDPA, Minnesota CDPA, Rhode Island DTPPA, …). Most require honoring Global Privacy Control ( Sec GPC: 1 ). UK: UK GDPR/DPA, PECR (cookies), Online Safety Act 2023, Data Use and Access Act (DUAA). Other: LGPD (Brazil), PIPEDA (Canada), POPIA (South Africa). What is the legal basis for processing? Consent (opt in), legitimate interest, or contractual necessity — this decides whether explicit consent must precede processing. Is there a DPO or legal team? They define the legal requirements; this skill only validates the technical implementation against them. Consent management What CMP is in use? OneTrust, Cookiebot, Didomi, Usercentrics, Iubenda, Sourcepoint, or Axeptio — or custom? The CMP sets the consent storage format, API, and integration. If you serve ads in the EEA or UK, you must use a Google certified CMP and Consent Mode v2 — uncertified CMPs block Google ad serving. As of 28 Feb 2026, new TC strings must be TCF v2.3 or Google demand treats traffic as unconsented and drops to Limited Ads. What consent categories exist? Typically Strictly Necessary (always on), Analytics/Performance, Functional/Preferences, Marketing/Targeting. How is consent signaled to third party scripts? IAB TCF v2 ( tcfapi ), a custom data layer, or direct CMP API? Advertising and accessibility What ad networks and formats? Google Ads, Meta, programmatic; display, video, interstitial. The Coalition for Better Ads defines which formats trigger Chrome ad filtering. Are there accessibility obligations (ADA, EAA, Section 508)? Those are real compliance, but author them in accessibility testing — this skill only maps the legal landscape, see below. Core Principles 1. Compliance is binary There is no "mostly compliant." A cookie that fires before consent is a violation. A banner you cannot dismiss without accepting is a violation. Test for exact compliance, not "good enough." 2. Automate the technical checks, schedule the legal audits Automate: cookies before consent, scripts loading without consent, banner functionality, cookie attributes, consent persistence, GPC, Consent Mode signals. A human still audits privacy policy language and cross border transfer documentation. Don't pretend a test settles a legal language question. 3. Test the unhappy consent states The compliance boundary lives in the "no interaction," "rejected," and "withdrawn" states — that is where violations hide. The "all accepted" state is the least interesting one to test. 4. Verify behavior, not the CMP CMPs have bugs. Don't trust the CMP UI as proof. Assert the actual outcome: were cookies set, did scripts load, was the GPC opt out registered. The CMP is an implementation detail; compliance is measured by behavior. 5. Defense in depth, config driven Verify at multiple layers — CMP config, network requests, cookie state, client signals. Drive tests from a typed inventory and a tracking domain list so adding a category or threshold is a data edit, not a suite rewrite. Regulations change; the suite must be cheap to update. GDPR / CMP Testing with Playwright Consent flow compliance breaks into distinct, independently failing checks. Full runnable code for each is in references/gdpr cmp tests.md . Consent banner and dark patterns — banner appears on first visit; accept and reject have equal prominence (reject is not a tiny link); a privacy policy link is present. Cookie state before/after consent — the critical test: no non essential cookies before consent; analytics cookies only after accepting; nothing non essential after rejecting. Maintain isStrictlyNecessary / isAnalyticsCookie classifiers against your inventory. Consent persistence and withdrawal — consent survives navigation; the user can withdraw via privacy settings, which must then clear the relevant cookies. Third party script blocking — tracking scripts ( google analytics.com , googletagmanager.com , facebook.net , analytics.tiktok.com , bat.bing.com , …) must not load before consent and should load after acceptance. This is the most critical check — monitor with page.on('request') . Global Privacy Control ( Sec GPC: 1 ) — a required honored signal under CCPA/CPRA and most active US state laws. With the header set, assert navigator.globalPrivacyControl === true (the real browser signal) and that marketing cookies are absent. Do not assert an invented window. cmp.gpcStatus global — it does not exist; TCF v1's cmp is legacy and TCF v2 uses tcfapi . TCF v2 consent state — every TCF certified CMP exposes window. tcfapi('getTCData', 2, cb) . Read purpose/vendor consent through it directly instead of guessing at CMP private globals; the same call exposes tcfPolicyVersion , which doubles as a TCF v2.3 freshness guard. Google Consent Mode v2 — required since March 2024 for Google ads in the EEA/UK. Default state must be denied for ad storage / analytics storage / ad user data / ad personalization ; an update signal must fire granted after acceptance. The interception assumes the gtag arguments array shape — note the object form fallback in the reference. EU AI Act Compliance The Act applies in phases, and the timeline shifted in 2026. Note: the Digital Omnibus (Nov 2025 proposal; 7 May 2026 provisional agreement) postponed the high risk obligations — do not test against the old 2 Aug 2026 high risk date. Obligation Applies What to test Prohibitions + AI literacy 2 Feb 2025 (live) No Article 5 prohibited practices (social scoring, real time public biometric ID, manipulative AI). Document AI features in scope; gate prohibited libraries. GPAI obligations + penalties 2 Aug 2025 (live) Model cards, training data summaries, copyright policy and disclosure pages exist. Article 50 transparency 2 Aug 2026 AI generated content marked; deepfake disclosure; user told they are interacting with AI. Test the disclosure label/watermark. Still live on this date. Machine readable marking grace 2 Dec 2026 Systems already on the market before 2 Aug 2026 get until here to add the watermark/marking (Omnibus compressed six months to three). High risk (Annex III, use case) 2 Dec 2027 Risk management, data governance, human oversight, transparency UI. Postponed from 2 Aug 2026 by the Omnibus. High risk (Annex I, product regulated) 2 Aug 2028 As above, embedded in regulated products. Postponed from 2 Aug 2027. Write the Article 50 disclosure test now; defer the high risk UI tests until the Annex III obligations land. See references/eu ai act tests.md for the Article 50 transparency disclosure test and the Article 5 prohibited practice (biometric library) gate. For LLM specific evaluation (hallucination, jailbreak resistance, prompt injection), use the ai system testing skill. Better Ads Standards The Coalition for Better Ads defines ad formats that trigger browser level ad filtering (Chrome filters ads on non compliant sites). Format Desktop Mobile Test approach Pop up ads Yes Yes Check for modal/overlay within 5s of load without user action Auto playing video with sound Yes Yes Read the live video.autoplay / video.muted properties (not the HTML attributes) Prestitial countdown ads Yes Yes Check for a countdown timer blocking content Large sticky ads ( 30% viewport) Yes Yes Measure sticky element dimensions vs viewport Ad density 30% No Yes Calculate total ad area vs content area Flashing animated ads No Yes Monitor animation frame rate ( 3 flashes/second) The muted video check must read the live DOM property ( el.muted ), not getAttribute('muted') — player scripts set video.muted = true in JS without ever adding the content attribute, so an attribute only check reports muted ads as having sound and misses muted then unmuted ads. Note: the CBA added two desktop and two mobile ad experiences on 14 Jan 2025; Chrome assessment of those begins no earlier than 14 May 2026. Re check newer combined formats against the current Better Ads Standards page before that date. See references/better ads tests.md for the auto playing video and mobile ad density checks. Cookie Compliance Maintain a typed cookie inventory as the source of truth, then assert that actual cookies match it on three axes: Inventory — a CookieDefinition[] capturing name, category, purpose, max expiry, and the Secure / HttpOnly / SameSite attributes each cookie must carry. Attribute validation — every observed cookie must match its definition's flags and not exceed its declared max expiry. Normalize an unset SameSite to None before comparing — Playwright omits or varies it when the server doesn't set it, so an un normalized check fails spuriously or passes silently. Drift detection — fail the suite ( throw , don't warn) when a cookie appears that is not in the inventory, forcing the inventory to stay current as scripts are added. See references/cookie compliance.md for the typed inventory and both implementations. Accessibility Compliance — legal map only Accessibility is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions, but author the actual tests in accessibility testing (axe core, keyboard, screen reader). This table is only the legal landscape so you know what the obligation is. Region Law Standard Enforcement EU European Accessibility Act (EAA) EN 301 549 / WCAG 2.1 AA Applied 28 June 2025; member state penalties active. WCAG 2.2 alignment expected in the next EN 301 549 revision. USA ADA WCAG 2.1 AA (court precedent) Private lawsuits USA (federal) Section 508 WCAG 2.0 AA Federal procurement requirement Canada (Ontario) AODA WCAG 2.0 AA Fines up to $100K/day UK Equality Act 2010 WCAG 2.1 AA (guidance) Lawsuits Scheduled Compliance Audits Run compliance tests weekly (not just on PR) to catch configuration drift, and retain results as long lived CI artifacts for the audit trail. See references/ci automation.md for the scheduled GitHub Actions workflow with 90 day artifact retention. Anti Patterns Testing only with consent accepted Running compliance tests only in the "all accepted" state. The compliance boundary is the "no interaction" and "rejected" states — that is where violations hide. Test every state: no interaction, accepted, rejected, partially accepted, withdrawn. Asserting an invented CMP global Checking window. cmp.gpcStatus or similar fabricated globals to "prove" a GPC opt out. That global does not exi

compliance-testing