skill-verification-gate

skill-verification-gate is a skill for Claude Code from nyldn/claude-octopus. It costs 20 tokens per session (1,265 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A checklist for verifying a change with a fresh command before calling it complete or passing.

In plain words
What is it for?
Running tests or other targeted checks and confirming their output before reporting success.
Why use it?
It prevents claims based only on confidence, old test runs, or another agent's report.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions subagents; mentions Codex.

Part of the octo plugin — 70 skills, 106 commands, 10 agents, 18 hooks shipped together

Good fit Running tests or other targeted checks and confirming their output before reporting success.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-verification-gate
About the project

Claude Octopus is an orchestration project that sends research, design, and coding tasks to Claude Code and other AI model providers so their results can be compared. Developers use it for multi-model work, disagreement detection, reviews, persistent context, and an optional workflow that moves from discovery through delivery. The catalogue entries are its commands, skills, agents, instructions, hooks, plugins, and settings.

nyldn/claude-octopus · 4,056 stars · on GitHub · reddit.com

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.

Any agent
npx skills add nyldn/claude-octopus --skill skill-verification-gate
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nyldn/claude-octopus

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install octo, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 70 skills, 106 commands, 10 agents, 18 hooks.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for skill-verification-gate

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-verification-gate/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-verification-gate)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-verification-gate"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-verification-gate/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for skill-verification-gate

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-verification-gate"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nyldn/claude-octopus/skill-verification-gate.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 20 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,265 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 88
    Code scans file system directories looking for sensitive files. This could be reconnaissance for credential theft.
    Fix: Remove unnecessary filesystem scanning. If file access is needed, use explicit, scoped paths. Avoid reading ~/.ssh, ~/.aws, or credential directories.
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00020 $0.01265
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00633
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00253
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00127

Measured 5d ago against content hash ff144d17ea21, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

skill-verification-gate 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 5d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

.claude/skills/skill-verification-gate/SKILL.md · 144 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 144 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Verification Gate

The Iron Law

If you haven't run the verification command in this turn, you cannot claim it passes.

The Gate

Before claiming any success or expressing satisfaction:

  1. IDENTIFY — What command proves this claim?
  2. RUN — Execute the full command (fresh, not cached)
  3. READ — Full output, check exit code, count failures
  4. VERIFY — Does output actually confirm the claim?
  5. ONLY THEN — State the claim WITH evidence

Skip any step = the claim is unverified.

Rationalization Table

Excuse Reality
"I ran the tests earlier this session" Earlier is not fresh. Code changed since. Run again.
"The edit was trivial, it can't break anything" Trivial edits break builds daily. The gate has no size exemption.
"The subagent reported success" Agent reports are claims, not evidence. Verify independently.
"CI will catch it anyway" CI is the safety net, not the verification. Verify before push.
"I'm confident this works" Confidence is not evidence. Run the command.
"Running the full suite is slow" Then run the targeted suite — but run something, fresh.

What Counts as Evidence

Claim Requires NOT Sufficient
Tests pass Test command output showing 0 failures Previous run, "should pass"
Build succeeds Build command exit 0 Linter passing
Bug fixed Reproduce original symptom: now passes "Code changed, should work"
Regression test works Red (fail without fix) → Green (pass with fix) Test passes once
Subagent completed task git diff shows expected changes Subagent says "done"
Requirements met Line-by-line checklist against spec Tests passing
Provider dispatch worked Output contains expected content No error ≠ success

Red Flags — STOP and Verify

If you catch yourself thinking any of these, STOP:

Read the full file on GitHub · 144 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. 5d ago First seen · 144 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A ff144d17ea21

Subscribe to this mod's changes

skill-verification-gate is a skill published in the GitHub repository nyldn/claude-octopus (4,056 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 1,265 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

eval-harness

This skill provides a promptfoo eval harness that measures whether a Soleur skill or agent edit actually improves behavior, comparing a skill arm against a baseline control arm.

jikig-ai/soleur · 36 tokens

legacy-code-expert

Use this agent when you need to safely modify legacy code that lacks tests. It applies Michael Feathers' dependency-breaking techniques from "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" to identify seams, plan characterization tests, and recommend safe transformation paths.

jikig-ai/soleur · 52 tokens

test-design-reviewer

Use this agent when you need to evaluate test quality using Dave Farley's 8 properties of good tests. It produces a weighted Test Quality Score (1-10 per property) with letter grades and prioritized improvement recommendations.

jikig-ai/soleur · 48 tokens

atdd-developer

This skill should be used when implementing features using Acceptance Test Driven Development. It guides through the RED/GREEN/REFACTOR cycle with explicit permission gates between phases.

jikig-ai/soleur · 38 tokens

api-testing

HTTP API testing for TypeScript (Supertest) and Python (httpx, pytest). Test REST APIs, GraphQL, request/response validation, authentication, and error handling.

secondsky/claude-skills · 39 tokens

outside-in-tdd

Use when writing tests from the outside-in, defining behavior before code, or any feature where tests should start from observable business behavior and let internal design emerge.

SebastienDegodez/copilot-instructions · 35 tokens