{
  "context": "This evaluation assesses how effectively the engineer uses the python-us package's direct state attribute access capability to build a state border validation utility. The focus is on utilizing the package's state objects accessed through direct attribute notation (e.g., us.states.MD) rather than implementing everything from scratch.",
  "type": "weighted_checklist",
  "checklist": [
    {
      "name": "Direct state access",
      "description": "Uses direct attribute access to retrieve state objects (e.g., us.states.MD, us.states.VA, us.states.CA) rather than manually creating state data or using only strings",
      "max_score": 30
    },
    {
      "name": "State validation",
      "description": "Validates state abbreviations using the python-us package by attempting to access state attributes and handling cases where states don't exist (e.g., checking if hasattr(us.states, abbr) or using try-except with AttributeError)",
      "max_score": 20
    },
    {
      "name": "STATES collection usage",
      "description": "Uses us.states.STATES or similar package-provided collections to iterate over valid states when building the border mapping, rather than hardcoding a list of all 50 state abbreviations",
      "max_score": 20
    },
    {
      "name": "State abbreviation access",
      "description": "Accesses state abbreviations using the .abbr attribute from state objects retrieved from the package (e.g., state.abbr) when building or working with the border mapping",
      "max_score": 15
    },
    {
      "name": "Case normalization",
      "description": "Handles case-insensitive input by normalizing abbreviations (e.g., using .upper()) before accessing state attributes like us.states.MD",
      "max_score": 10
    },
    {
      "name": "Border mapping structure",
      "description": "Creates an appropriate data structure (dictionary, set, or similar) that maps state abbreviations to their bordering states to enable the shares_border function",
      "max_score": 5
    }
  ]
}