verification-before-completion

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 APPLICABLE VERIFICATION EVIDENCE

"Applicable" means evidence valid for the current checked state: revision/snapshot, exact command, scope, environment, run timestamp. Reuse existing evidence until an invalidation condition occurs (code change, failure, or unresolved concern) and report that provenance instead of treating the chat turn as a clock; a fresh invocation is required only when no valid evidence for the checked state exists.

The Gate Function

BEFORE claiming a verified result:

1. IDENTIFY: What command proves this claim?
2. RUN: Execute that command completely when no applicable evidence exists
   for the current checked state — "complete" means no truncated or partial
   run of the check that proves THIS claim, not every check the repo has
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. Reusing evidence that is still valid
for the checked state (same revision, no invalidating change/failure/concern)
is not skipping — but claiming without either is lying.

Scope is part of honesty, in both directions. Claiming a suite-wide green you did not run is a lie; re-running an unchanged check with no new changes, failures, or unresolved concerns is ceremony, not verification. Broaden when scope warrants: shared code touched, or a failure the targeted check exposed.

Common Failures

Claim	Requires	Not Sufficient
Tests pass	Test command output: 0 failures on checked state	Unchecked assumption, "should pass"
Linter clean	Linter output: 0 errors	Extrapolating to the claim's scope; a different check's output for that scope
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	Inspect changed artifacts and exercise the claimed behavior	Agent reports "success"
Requirements met	Line-by-line checklist	Tests passing