Verify

Verify

Self-check your own completed change before independent review. Verify proves the change boots, passes guardrails, and survives the real surface; it is not a ship decision.

Principles

• Verify is the builder's gate before independent review; it does not replace it
• The builder does not grade their own work in the same context — switch into a fresh evaluator context or separate subagent first
• Run repo guardrails first, then hit the real surface
• Keep proof layers separate: local guardrails, focused regression checks, real-surface runtime proof, CI, and live/deploy evidence are related but not interchangeable
• Prefer smoke, integration, contract, or e2e proof over unit tests that mock most of the behavior under test
• Self-correct obvious issues you spot while exercising the change; leave rigorous code-shape judgment to an independent review pass
• Load shared doctrine from the repo's guidance files such as AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, or repo rules before judging the result
• If the infrastructure is too weak to verify reliably, stop and report the readiness gap.

Handoffs

• Verification passed → report readiness for independent review.
• No stable boot, smoke, or interaction path means the repo needs readiness setup before verification can be trusted.
• Auditing existing code, a diff, branch, or PR you did not author is independent review work.
• Stale AGENTS.md, README, specs, or repo docs are documentation work unless they block verification.

Before You Start

1. Define the exact change being verified and the expected user-visible behavior
2. Switch into an independent evaluator context before judging your own work
3. Load the target repo's guidance files such as AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, or repo rules, when present
4. Confirm you can boot and interact with the real surface
5. Define the proof boundary: what local, CI, live, or provider-specific claim you are actually verifying
6. Pick the smallest check set that can disprove the change honestly

Workflow

1. Run deterministic guardrails first

• Prefer the repo's built-in entrypoint: make verify, just verify, pnpm test, cargo test, or the nearest targeted equivalent
• During iteration, run targeted checks to avoid context flooding; before handoff, run the canonical local gate when it exists and is feasible
• When choosing tests, prefer the strongest cheap proof available: smoke, integration, contract, or e2e checks beat mock-heavy unit suites that mainly replay implementation details
• Swallow boring success output and surface only failures, anomalies, and exact commands

2. Exercise the real surface

• UI → run the browser automation, navigate the changed flow, and capture screenshots
• API → hit the local endpoint with a real request such as curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/health
• CLI → run the shipped command such as node dist/cli.js --help or the repo's packaged entrypoint
• state/config → verify round trips, restart behavior, and config boot paths
• deploy/live wiring → prove the actual configured surface when required; do not imply production readiness from a local build alone

Follow [references/evidence-rules.md](references/evidence-rules.md) when collecting proof.

3. Self-correct obvious issues

While exercising the change, fix anything cheap and obvious that you spot:

• A typo in a log line, a stale comment, an unused import, a duplicated helper inside the diff
• An any, unsafe as, or non-null assertion you can replace with a real type in seconds
• A failure path that swallows errors silently when a one-line throw makes the diagnostic useful

Keep this as a self-check pass. Leave substantive code-shape concerns (architecture mismatches, broader duplication, error-classification redesigns) for independent review. Use [references/simplification.md](references/simplification.md) as a short self-check.

4. Probe adjacent risk

• Check the main happy path
• Check at least one failure path or edge case
• Check that at least one exercised failure path returns or logs a useful, actionable error instead of a vague or swallowed failure
• Re-test any config, persistence, or restart-sensitive behavior touched by the change

5. Synthesize the verdict

Produce one clear outcome:

• ready for review — guardrails green, real surface confirmed, no obvious self-correctable issues left
• needs more work — the change is not ready to be reviewed; specific issues to address are listed
• blocked — verification cannot proceed, usually because infrastructure is too weak

Verify reports readiness for review. If a requested proof surface was unavailable, name that boundary explicitly instead of substituting a weaker check. The independent ship decision belongs to a separate review pass.

Output

After verification, report in this compact bullet shape:

• - verdict: exactly one of ready for review, needs more work, or blocked
• - evidence: concise explanations of what checks proved, not full commands
• - fixed during verify: only if self-corrections happened
• - unverified or gaps: readiness gaps, doc drift, or none
• - next: independent review, readiness setup, documentation cleanup, more implementation, or none

Keep the final answer short:

• Put detailed failures, screenshots, traces, and file references in native findings or the work log, not in the footer
• Summarize command output that already appeared in the terminal
• Keep the footer to 5 labeled lines or fewer
• Omit fixed during verify when nothing was corrected
• Summarize passing checks by intent and result, for example typecheck passed for tv-vite or API smoke check returned 200; include full commands only when they failed, are needed for reproduction, or the user asks for them
• For failures or blocked checks, include the relevant error/status line or response snippet in the report

Example:

- verdict: ready for review
- evidence: retry tests covered success and failure paths; API retry smoke returned 200
- unverified or gaps: none
- next: review-gang

References

• [references/verification.md](references/verification.md) — evaluator pattern, targeted real-surface checks, and cost trade-offs
• [references/evidence-rules.md](references/evidence-rules.md) — what counts as proof and how to report it
• [references/simplification.md](references/simplification.md) — clarity, dedupe, and "fresh-agent readability" checks for changed code

Source & license

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

• Author: uinaf
• Source: uinaf/agents
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://tessl.io/registry/uinaf

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