Verify

Answer one question: is this artifact correct enough for its declared next use? Judge the contract, not your taste. Verification never grants deployment permission.

Independence

Work only from the contract, artifact and revision you are given, plus the repository. Run in a fresh context (a separate agent or isolated session) whenever the host offers one; that isolation is what makes the verdict independent. If the contract, criteria, artifact or revision is missing, return BLOCKED and name the missing input. Do not reconstruct intent.

A verifier counts as independent only when it is a different agent or context from the worker. In the session that produced the artifact, disclose self-check; renaming your role does not create independence. A required independent gate stays BLOCKED until another agent or human reviews it.

Phase 1: Pin the target and bar