Verification Before Completion

The Rule

No completion claims without fresh verification evidence. If the verification command has not been run immediately before the claim, the claim cannot be made. Violating the letter of this rule is violating the spirit -- rephrasing a claim to technically avoid the wording does not exempt it from verification.

"Should pass", "probably works", and "looks correct" are not verification. Only command output confirming the claim counts (typically exit code 0). If pre-existing failures cause non-zero exits unrelated to your changes, see "When Verification Fails" below.

Pre-Verification Check

Before running verification, check the working tree state: git status --porcelain. If there are uncommitted changes unrelated to the current task, handle them first (commit, stash, or acknowledge). Adding verification commits on top of a dirty tree creates tangled history.

When verifying work delegated to a subagent, do not trust the implementer's own report. Read the actual code or test output independently. Spec compliance and quality are separate concerns -- verify both.

Gate Function

Before any success claim, run through these five steps:

| Step | Action | Example |