verify-and-explain

Verify And Explain

When to use

• A user asks whether work is correct, complete, safe, or functioning.
• A technical result must be explained to a non-specialist.
• Review evidence is spread across tests, logs, code, screenshots, or configuration.

Workflow

1. Restate the claim and define what evidence would prove or disprove it.
2. Inspect authoritative code, tests, logs, artifacts, and runtime behavior.
3. Label each conclusion as verified, contradicted, inferred, or unknown.
4. Resolve contradictions before summarizing; do not average conflicting evidence.
5. Explain the outcome from impact to cause to proof to next action.
6. Match vocabulary and depth to the named audience without removing material risk.
7. For multi-condition claims, use the acceptance and evidence matrix to make coverage, freshness, contradictions, and unknowns explicit.
8. For checkpointed ordinary tasks, follow the execution contract at skills/create-task-file/references/execution-contract.md. Run commands/validate-task-checkpoint.sh <task> --phase resume before trusting a handoff and --phase complete before completion/readiness. Inspect external observations again when their freshness matters.

Output

• A direct result and confidence level.
• A compact evidence list with commands or artifacts.
• Unknowns, residual risk, and the smallest useful next action.

Guardrails

• Do not present successful command execution as proof of unrelated behavior.
• Do not invent measurements, test results, or causal explanations.
• Use plain language without becoming vague or patronizing.
• Checkpoint validation proves only the declared file identities and mechanical conditions. It does not judge semantic correctness, independently verify an external system, or grant publication approval.
• Changed candidates invalidate affected proof, including dirty and untracked outputs. Re-run affected checks; merely re-recording hashes must not turn stale evidence into verified evidence.
• Preserve failed attempts and explain the evidence or changed conditions that justify a retry. Never lower acceptance criteria to make a check pass.