Superpowers is a software development methodology for coding agents that guides work from clarifying requirements through design, planning, implementation, testing, and review. It is for developers who want agents to follow a structured, test-focused process using composable skills and subagents.
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.
npx skills add obra/superpowers --skill verification-before-completiongit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/obra/superpowersWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers/verification-before-completion)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers/verification-before-completion"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers/verification-before-completion/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/obra/superpowers/verification-before-completion"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/obra/superpowers/verification-before-completion.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- Socket pass
- Snyk pass
- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
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 Excessive Agency · line 54 Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00043 | $0.00854 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00017 | $0.00342 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00009 | $0.00171 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00004 | $0.00085 |
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 1mo 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.
Copies of this mod
8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- verification-before-completion — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- verification-before-completion — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- verification-before-completion — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- verification-before-completion — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- verification-before-completion — 100% identical, 2 lines differ
- verification-before-completion — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- verification-before-completion — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- verification-before-completion — 100% identical, 10 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 121 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Verification Before Completion
Overview
Core principle: Evidence before claims, always.
Violating the letter of this rule is violating the spirit of this rule.
The Iron Law
NO COMPLETION CLAIMS WITHOUT FRESH VERIFICATION EVIDENCE
If you haven't run the verification command in this message, you cannot claim it passes.
The Gate Function
BEFORE claiming any status or expressing satisfaction:
1. IDENTIFY: What command proves this claim?
2. RUN: Execute the FULL command (fresh, complete)
3. READ: Full output, check exit code, count failures
4. VERIFY: Does output confirm the claim?
- If NO: State actual status with evidence
- If YES: State claim WITH evidence
5. ONLY THEN: Make the claim
Skip any step = lying, not verifying
Common Failures
| Claim | Requires | Not Sufficient |
|---|---|---|
| Tests pass | Test command output: 0 failures | Previous run, "should pass" |
| Linter clean | Linter output: 0 errors | Partial check, extrapolation |
| Build succeeds | Build command: exit 0 | Linter passing, logs look good |
| Bug fixed | Test original symptom: passes | Code changed, assumed fixed |
| Regression test works | Red-green cycle verified | Test passes once |
| Agent completed | VCS diff shows changes | Agent reports "success" |
| Requirements met | Line-by-line checklist | Tests passing |
Red Flags - STOP
- Using "should", "probably", "seems to"
- Expressing satisfaction before verification ("Great!", "Perfect!", "Done!", etc.)
- About to commit/push/PR without verification
- Trusting agent success reports
- Relying on partial verification
- Thinking "just this once"
- Tired and wanting work over
- ANY wording implying success without having run verification
Rationalization Prevention
| Excuse | Reality |
|---|---|
| "Should work now" | RUN the verification |
| "I'm confident" | Confidence ≠ evidence |
| "Just this once" | No exceptions |
| "Linter passed" | Linter ≠ compiler |
| "Agent said success" | Verify independently |
| "I'm tired" | Exhaustion ≠ excuse |
| "Partial check is enough" | Partial proves nothing |
| "Different words so rule doesn't apply" | Spirit over letter |
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 121 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A 2befe7fc55bc
verification-before-completion is a skill published in the GitHub repository obra/superpowers (301,647 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 854 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-30.
Other skills, from other repositories
skill-creator
Create a skill or bring an existing one up to the same standard (validate + asm eval fix loop); run evals, tune triggering. Use when authoring, fixing, or retrofitting a skill. Don't use for invoking skills, writing prose, or Python scaffolds.
skill-index-updater
Add GitHub skill repos to the ASM index: clone, audit, eval, regenerate index, rebuild catalog, open PR. Use when given GitHub URLs to onboard. Don't use for refreshing indexed repos (refresh-index), improving skills (skill-creator), or install.
hello-world
A minimal test skill that greets the user and demonstrates the ASM publish workflow.
echarts
You MUST use this when building, styling, debugging, or optimizing Apache ECharts charts in JavaScript, React, or Vue - setup, lifecycle, responsive resizing, theming, large datasets, streaming, SSR, and symptoms like a blank chart or broken resize. Not for choosing chart types or for other charting libraries.
typescript
You MUST use this when working on TypeScript-specific problems - compiler errors, tsconfig, strict typing, type inference, generics, complex type definitions, module resolution, ESM/CJS interoperability, type-checking performance, migration, or monorepo configuration. Also applies to designing or refactoring type-safe…
debugging
You MUST use this when investigating bugs, regressions, failing tests, build or integration failures, flaky behavior, performance anomalies, or other unexpected technical behavior.