How EA Dojo Gates Practice Questions Before Students See Them
EA Dojo uses separate build-time and runtime release gates, quarantines evidence mismatches, and states plainly what hashes and source links do—and do not—prove.
Last reviewed: August 7, 2026. This describes the 2026–27 EA Dojo release boundary.
EA Dojo treats a question as releasable only when its question record, review record, learner-visible sources, and current exam cycle agree. A source URL by itself is not proof that an answer is right.
The current SEE is based on law amended through December 31, 2025 and, unless a question says otherwise, calendar year 2025. The testing window runs through February 28, 2027. The IRS enrolled-agent FAQ is the release-cycle authority.
What the safety audit changed
An August 2026 audit found 157 candidate questions whose learner-visible source set did not exactly match the source set attached to the review evidence. Ninety-nine of those sets were completely disjoint. Those records are quarantined from practice, flashcards, diagnostics, mock exams, article activities, and progress counts until they receive a new claim-level review.
This is the important principle: a question does not become safe because a related IRS publication is attached to it. The cited passage must support the prompt, keyed answer, and explanation, and the source shown to the learner must be the source that was reviewed.
The two release boundaries
The build gate checks the generated question bank against its review and quarantine records. A learner-released question must have:
- a current 2026–27 content-cycle marker;
- a review bound to the exact prompt, choices, answer, explanation, part, and topic payload;
- official HTTPS authority URLs;
- exact parity between reviewed evidence URLs and learner-visible URLs;
- valid four-choice structure and a valid answer key; and
- no active evidence-quarantine entry.
The learner-facing application repeats the critical checks. Every practice, flashcard, diagnostic, mock, Forge, and article-question loader uses the same fail-closed admission rule. This defense matters if a stale generated file ever reaches the application despite the build gate.
What a hash proves
EA Dojo hashes the question payload so an edit to the prompt, choices, answer, explanation, part, or topic invalidates the existing review. That is a tamper and drift control.
A payload hash does not prove that a tax conclusion is correct. It does not prove that an evidence excerpt entails the answer, and it does not make an annual rule current. Those are review questions. Official-source restrictions, exact evidence parity, cycle expiry, manual claim review, and student issue reports are separate controls.
What students can verify
Released answer feedback links to the official authority used by the review. If an item is not current-cycle and learner-admissible, it is not placed in a study deck and cannot receive the “Primary-source verified” badge.
The IRS also publishes sample SEE questions and answers. Those samples show the official question style; they are not a complete study curriculum.
The honest boundary
No automated pipeline can establish tax truth from a hostname or a checksum. EA Dojo’s guardrails are designed to expose disagreement, stop questionable records from reaching students, and require explicit review before release. When the system cannot establish the release contract, it withholds the content.