Verify done-claims against ground truth, not the agent's word

Overview

When an AI agent says "done", "shipped", or "fixed", that is a claim, not a fact — and a claim the agent checks by re-reading its own work is consistency, not grounding. This skill replaces that self-report with a verdict from a witness the agent did not author: it shells the DOS kernel (dos verify, dos commit-audit) to confirm the claimed effect from git ancestry and the commit's actual diff. DOS is deterministic — no API key, no LLM. The verdict is git-only and offline as used here; the one exception is dos verify in a workspace that wires a CI oracle, which --no-ci suppresses (see Security & Safety Notes).

This skill adapts the DOS reference "witness-claim" pattern (anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel) into a host-agnostic screenplay.

When to Use This Skill

• Use when an agent reports a task/phase/feature as complete and you want that "done" confirmed from evidence before building on it.
• Use right after a commit, to confirm the commit's message matches its diff (catch a fix: that only touched a README, or a "tests pass" that deleted the assertions).
• Use when folding many sub-agents' results — verify each claimed effect instead of trusting the return string.
• Do not use it to judge whether code is correct — that is what the test suite is for. This skill checks did-the-claimed-thing-actually-ship.

How It Works

Step 1: Install the kernel (once)

python3 -m venv .dos-venv
. .dos-venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install 'dos-kernel==<reviewed-version>'  # provides the `dos` CLI

Step 2: Audit the latest commit's claim vs its diff

A commit subject is forgeable (whoever wrote the message authored it); the files it touched are not (git did). dos commit-audit grades the subject against the actual diff:

dos commit-audit --workspace . HEAD --json

commit-audit --json prints a JSON array of audited commits (one element even for a single HEAD), so read verdict from the first element — e.g. dos commit-audit --workspace . HEAD --json | jq -r '.[0].verdict'. (Without --json the same verdict prints as a one-line text row: · OK …, ⚑ UNWITNESSED …, or · abstain ….) The verdicts are: OK (the diff backs the claim's kind), CLAIM_UNWITNESSED (the subject's claim is not evidenced by the diff — treat the "done" as unproven), or ABSTAIN. This judges the kind of change, never correctness — run the tests for that.

Step 3: Verify a named phase actually shipped

If the agent claims a specific plan/phase landed, confirm it from git history rather than the transcript:

dos verify --workspace . PLAN PHASE --json --no-ci

--no-ci keeps the verdict git-only (see the Security note below). With --json you get the shipped and source fields. (The default text form prints SHIPPED PLAN PHASE (via grep) or NOT_SHIPPED PLAN PHASE (via none) — the same verdict, and the process exit code is non-zero when not shipped.)

Grade shipped: true by the source, because git fallback grades itself by forgeability — and forgeable evidence is exactly what this skill exists to distrust:

• registry or grep-artifact — non-forgeable (a registry row, or an artefact/diff rung). This closes the claim.
• grep-subject (or bare grep) — forgeable: a commit subject or body carried the phase token, which an agent can write without doing the work (even on an empty commit). Treat this as shipped-per-the-subject, not confirmed — corroborate it (run dos commit-audit on that commit, below) before you close.
• none — no positive evidence; accept as "not shipped", not as a tool failure.

Step 4: Fold only confirmed effects

Accept the agent's "done" only when Step 2/3 corroborate it. If CLAIM_UNWITNESSED or shipped: false, the work is not done regardless of how confidently the agent narrated it — send it back.

Examples

Example 1: gate an agent's "I fixed the bug" claim

# The agent committed and said it's fixed. Check the diff backs the claim.
# commit-audit --json returns an array, so read the first element's verdict:
dos commit-audit --workspace . HEAD --json | jq -r '.[0].verdict'
# OK                -> the change is of the claimed kind; now run the tests
# CLAIM_UNWITNESSED -> the commit doesn't do what it says; reject

Example 2: confirm a feature phase shipped before closing a ticket

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