verification-before-completion

A rule set requiring fresh, relevant evidence before saying that development work is complete. It distinguishes code that was implemented from work that was verified locally, passed repository or pull-request checks, deployed, or observed to remain stable.

In plain words
What is it for?
Useful for finding the repository's real checks, comparing the baseline with the final state, rerunning checks after edits, and reporting exactly what has or has not been proven.
Why use it?
It prevents completion claims based only on effort or confidence. It also requires failures and unavailable checks to be reported honestly rather than treated as passes.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/kensaurus/cursor-kenji/verification-before-completion
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kensaurus/cursor-kenji

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 552 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 552 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00552 $0.00552
Opus 5 $0.00276 $0.00276
Sonnet 5 $0.00110 $0.00110
Haiku 4.5 $0.00055 $0.00055

Measured 2d ago against content hash 52dc7aaa761d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

verification-before-completion scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/rules/verification-before-completion.mdc · 46 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 46 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Verification Before Completion

Completion is a claim about observed state, not effort or confidence.

Evidence rules

  • Discover the repository's real verification commands from manifests, CI, and project instructions. Do not invent generic commands when the repo defines its own.
  • Establish a baseline before substantive edits when practical. Separate pre-existing failures from regressions introduced by the change.
  • Run fresh, applicable checks after the final relevant edit. Changed-file diagnostics alone do not prove project behavior.
  • Later edits invalidate earlier evidence for affected gates. Re-run every invalidated check.
  • A failing check is work to diagnose and repair, not a warning to mention after claiming success.
  • During a present-then-stop audit-* or plan-* pass, record failing checks as findings. Do not implement fixes unless the user asked to execute.
  • Never delete, skip, narrow, mock away, blanket-update, or silence the behavior under test to obtain green output.
  • If a check is unavailable, report not run and the concrete reason. Never translate missing evidence into a pass.

Completion levels

Use the highest level actually proven:

  1. Implemented — files changed; no verification claim.
  2. Scoped verified — changed files and affected tests/checks pass.
  3. Repository green — every configured local gate passes from the required scope.
  4. PR green — remote CI is complete and successful; required review threads are resolved.
  5. Deployed verified — the intended source revision is live on the confirmed target and production smoke checks pass.
  6. Observed stable — the defined monitoring window elapsed without crossing rollback/hotfix thresholds.

Do not call a task "done," "shipped," "green," or "stable" at a higher level than the evidence supports.

Required final gate

Before the final response:

  1. Reconcile the request/plan against the full diff and durable task state.
  2. Confirm no applicable checklist items remain open.
  3. Run the applicable verification ladder with fresh output.
  4. For approved plans, wide changes, or explicit closure mode, invoke the completion-judge subagent. A CONTINUE verdict returns to implementation; BLOCKED is not success.
  5. Report exact commands, outcomes, skipped gates, baseline failures, and real human blockers.

Read the full file on GitHub · 46 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 46 lines · 552 tokens per session scan A 52dc7aaa761d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

verification-before-completion is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository kensaurus/cursor-kenji (9 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 552 tokens to every session, about $0.0028 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.