Most production defects don’t start in code. They start in a work item.
The work item clears refinement. It gets a sprint. Then a developer opens it and finds acceptance criteria that can’t be tested, a description that hides three separate features, or a dependency on another team nobody linked. Some of it ships anyway, and the bug lands weeks later with a root cause analysis pointing straight back at the work item.
Vindex reads each work item the way a sharp reviewer would, checking whether it’s actually independent, valuable, estimable, small, testable, and negotiable, and tells you, in plain language, what’s missing. That’s it. It doesn’t replace refinement. It makes refinement catch what it currently misses.
Here’s what a score looks like.
Each work item gets a single overall health score as a percentage and a per-dimension breakdown. The findings are plain language first. The methodology is one click deeper for anyone who wants it.
Acceptance criteria you can actually test.
"Acceptance criteria are missing or untestable" beats a bare number every time.
Work items sized to fit a sprint.
Flags the PBI that is silently three features pretending to be one.
Dependencies you can see before planning.
Hidden cross-team dependencies surfaced in the finding, not discovered mid-sprint.
The CSV is the demo. Azure DevOps is where Vindex actually lives.
Once you install the Vindex extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace and connect it, every work item your team writes gets scored automatically: the moment it’s created, every time it’s updated. You choose which projects are in scope.
A work item is created or edited
A Service Hook tells Vindex the moment it happens. Nobody uploads anything; nobody remembers to run a check.
Vindex scores it
The scoring engine reads the title, description, and acceptance criteria and evaluates all six INVEST dimensions asynchronously.
Findings land on the work item form
The Vindex panel shows the score, the breakdown, and plain-language findings, right where the work gets refined.
Scores on every work item update.
Service Hooks fire on create and update, so scores stay current as the work item evolves. Edit and save to re-score, free, any time.
Findings where your team works.
The score and the per-dimension breakdown render in a Vindex panel on the work item form. Findings lead in plain language; the methodology is a click deeper.
Nothing changes in your process.
Vindex adds no custom fields and never writes to your work items. Scores live in the extension's own storage, so install is frictionless and reversible.
10 free stories every month.
Every organization that installs Vindex gets 10 new stories a month free, with unlimited free re-scoring. No Vindex account, no credit card.
Try it on one work item. Then install it in Azure DevOps.
30-second preview here. A few minutes to install and connect in Azure DevOps. 10 free stories a month, automatically, after that. Re-scoring is always included.