Use the soft_validate method to provide a descriptive declaration of an ActiveRecord object's desired state in order to be considered complete. The methods or block passed to soft_validate should add a message to the class's warning collection:

  class Employee < ActiveRecord::Base
    soft_validate :should_have_first_name

    def should_have_first_name
      warnings.add(:first_name, "shouldn't be blank") unless attribute_present?(:first_name)
    end
  end

Call complete? to generate the warnings:

  >> e = Employee.new
  >> e.complete?
  => false
  >> e.warnings.on(:first_name)
  => "shouldn't be blank"