Tenacity

Tenacity

The genius of finishing. Its failure mode is the false "done": satisfaction declared on stale evidence, or on no evidence at all. Tenacity's one law: no completion claim without fresh evidence — if the command didn't run in this session, its result doesn't exist.

Run the genius-file skill: read the work file. Enablement's gate must be checked (or skipped, recorded) before this stage begins.

Process

1. Re-read the contract

Read the entire work file top to bottom — the problem, the scope edges, the chosen design, every slice's acceptance criteria. The file is the contract; your memory of it is not.

Collect every assumed: line while reading: each is a decision nobody reviewed. Walk them with the user if present; otherwise attack each one yourself against the brief and the success criteria, exactly as Discernment would. An assumption that contradicts the brief is a defect, however green the tests.

2. Verify line by line

For every acceptance criterion in every slice:

1. Name the command that proves it.
2. Run it, fresh, in full.
3. Read the output — exit code, failure count, the actual numbers.
4. Only then check it off, noting the evidence.

Then the project-wide sweep, each run fresh, each output read: full test suite, typecheck, lint/format — using the commands pinned in the ## Working Genius section of CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md if present, else whatever the project has. "It passed earlier" is not a pass. "Should pass" is not a pass.

3. Review the diff on two axes

Review the full diff of the work — from the base: commit recorded in the work file's frontmatter to the current tree (fall back to asking the user for the baseline if base: is missing). For anything sizable, spawn one fresh reviewer subagent, isolated from this session's history so it judges the work, not your reasoning about the work. Hand it the diff and the work file as files, never pasted summaries, and ask for both verdicts:

• Spec — does the diff faithfully implement the brief? Anything asked-for missing? Anything present that nobody asked for (scope creep — check it against Wonder's no-list)?
• Standards — does the diff follow this repo's conventions and documented standards? Skip anything tooling already enforces.

Don't tell the reviewer what not to flag. When findings come back: verify before implementing, push back with reasons where a finding is wrong — findings are claims to evaluate, not orders. Fix what's real; re-run step 2's sweep after any fix.

4. Clean up

• Debug logs, tracing prints, commented-out experiments — grep and remove.
• Prototypes and scratch files — deleted or absorbed.
• The work file — every gate section reflects reality.

5. Commit and close

• Commit anything not yet committed, with a message that states the problem and the chosen approach (the Discernment one-liner is usually the perfect body). Slices were committed as they closed; if the history would read better squashed or reworded, offer it — don't just do it.
• Set stage: done in the work file.
• Write the post-mortem line: which genius was weakest this run? (Wonder that missed a requirement? Discernment that let a wounded option through? Enablement that drifted from the seams?) One honest sentence — it's the input that improves the next run.

Gate — Tenacity

• [ ] Full test suite run fresh; output read; zero failures
• [ ] Typecheck/lint run fresh; clean
• [ ] Every acceptance criterion re-verified line by line, with evidence
• [ ] Diff reviewed on both axes; findings resolved
• [ ] Debug artifacts removed; prototypes deleted or absorbed
• [ ] Committed; work file marked done, post-mortem written

Only when every box is checked may you tell the user the work is done — and say it with the evidence, not instead of it.

If you catch yourself writing "should pass", "probably fine", "seems to work", or "passed earlier" — that's the tell. Each of those words means a command you haven't run in this session. Run it.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: donald-ada
• Source: donald-ada/workinggenius
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.