ia-verification-before-completion

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.

"Should pass", "probably works", and "looks correct" are not verification. Only command output confirming the claim counts (typically exit code 0). Pre-existing failures causing non-zero exits unrelated to the current 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) -- verification commits on top of a dirty tree create tangled history.

Dirty tree + shared-module change → local green is not evidence. Reproduce on a clean base (isolated-verification.md).

For delegated work: never trust the implementer subagent's own report -- spec compliance and quality are separate concerns, verify both. Confirm via the VCS diff that changes were actually made, then run the verification command directly; never relay the subagent's claim.

Scope Confirmation (Pre-Edit Gate)

This gate fires at task start, before the first edit. When a request uses ambiguous spatial scope -- "migrate my project", "refactor the codebase", "update everywhere", "fix this across the app", "my code/repo/project" -- confirm the concrete scope before any Write or Edit. Imperative phrasing is not defined scope.

Run a breakdown command to surface the real blast radius:

rg -l 'pattern' | cut -d/ -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn   # files per top-level dir
rg -l 'pattern' | xargs dirname | sort -u                   # affected directories

Present the result -- "This touches N files across M subsystems" -- with scope options: (a) everything, (b) just , (c) pick specific files. Ask via AskUserQuestion (Claude Code; load with ToolSearch select:AskUserQuestion if not loaded) or request_user_input (Codex); fall back to numbered options in chat. Do not start editing until the user commits to one option.

When this applies: any request whose scope could plausibly span more than one directory AND where the user has not enumerated files. For a request with explicit file paths, skip this gate.

Gate Function

Before any success claim, run through these five steps:

Step	Action	Example
1. Identify	What command proves this claim? The full chain -- build -> typecheck -> lint -> test -> security scan -> diff review, stop on first failure -- applies to ship-level claims (commit/push/PR-ready); for a single claim, run the proof command from the Common Claims table below.	pytest tests/, npm test, curl -s localhost:3000/health
2. Run	Run it now, in this same message. Output from an earlier turn is stale and does not count.	"I ran it earlier" fails this step
3. Read	Read the complete output, check exit code	Don't scan for "passed" -- read failure counts, warnings, errors
4. Verify	Does the output actually confirm the claim?	"42 passed, 0 failed" confirms "tests pass". "41 passed, 1 failed" does not.
5. Claim	Only now make the statement	"All 42 tests pass" with the evidence visible

Verification Strategies by Change Type

Type-check and unit tests are the universal baseline — not sufficient proof on their own. Match the strategy to the change:

Change type	Required verification
Frontend (component, page, form)	Start the dev server, exercise the feature in a browser, check the console; test the happy path AND one failure path
Backend handler / endpoint	curl the endpoint, check response shape and status code, hit at least one error path (invalid input, missing auth)
CLI tool	Run the binary with real inputs; check stdout, stderr, exit code. Run from /tmp to catch "only works from source" bugs
Infra / IaC (Terraform, Dockerfile, k8s)	terraform plan / docker build / kubectl apply --dry-run=server; review the diff before applying
Database migration	Run migration up, down, then up again against production-shape data
Refactoring (no behavior change)	Full test suite passes unchanged; public API surface diff shows no breakage (grep exported identifiers)
Library / package update	Run the consumer's test suite against the new version; check for deprecation warnings
Schema change	Old consumers parse the new shape (forward compat); new consumers handle old data still present (backward compat)
Documentation / prose	Read the rendered output; confirm links, formatting, and content match intent
Config with no validator	Validate syntax where possible (jq ., yamllint); otherwise read the file and confirm it matches the intended change
Non-runnable changes	git diff, confirm the diff matches intent, and state explicitly: "No automated verification available — verified by reading the diff."

Reading code is not a strategy. If the table has no row for the change, fall back to the Non-runnable row. The principle holds even when no test suite applies: state what was checked and how.

Adversarial Probes

For any change that touches production logic, include at least one adversarial probe in the verification. Pick the most relevant from:

• Boundary value: 0, -1, empty string, empty array, null, undefined, MAX_INT, 1-char unicode combining mark
• Concurrency: two parallel requests with the same identifier (for state changes, races, double-spend classes)
• Idempotency: run the same mutation twice; the second should either no-op or error cleanly, not corrupt state
• Orphan op: delete/update/get a nonexistent ID — does it 404/return-null as expected, or throw an internal error?

Exempt: docs changes, trivial typo fixes, pure rename refactors. Everything else: one probe minimum -- a report with zero adversarial probes is a happy-path confirmation, not verification.

Review Staleness

Before shipping, check whether prior reviews (agent or human) are still valid. If commits landed after the last review (git log --oneline <review-commit>..HEAD), verify the new changes don't invalidate its conclusions: previously flagged issues are still fixed, and no new code contradicts the review's approval.

When This Applies

• About to claim "tests pass", "build succeeds", or "bug fixed"
• About to commit, push, create a PR, or mark a task complete
• After completing each plan step / before starting the next file
• Reporting results to the user
• A subagent reports success on delegated work

Red Flags

Fantasy assessment auto-fail. "Zero issues found" on a first implementation pass is a red flag, not a green light -- first implementations typically need 2-3 revision cycles, so "perfect on the first try" more likely means incomplete verification. Re-verify with a broader scope.

Negative confirmation at signoff. State what defect classes were checked and NOT found, not just what passed: "tests pass, no type errors, no lint warnings, no security flags in the changed files" proves the scope of verification; "tests pass" alone does not.

Requirements vs Tests

"Tests pass" and "requirements met" are different claims: re-read the plan or requirements, create a line-by-line checklist, verify each item against the implementation, then report gaps or confirm completion. Passing tests prove the code works, not that the right code was written.

Common Claims and Their Proof

Claim	Required Proof
"Tests pass"	Test runner output showing 0 failures, exit code 0
"Build succeeds"	Build command output with exit code 0
"Bug is fixed"	Original reproduction case now passes
"Feature complete"	All acceptance criteria verified individually
"No regressions"	Full test suite passes, not just new tests
"Regression test works"	Red-green cycle: test passes, revert fix, test fails, restore fix, test passes
"Linting clean"	Linter output showing 0 errors/warnings

When Verification Fails

If the output does not confirm the claim:

1. Do not claim completion. Report the actual failure output to the user.
2. Do not retry the same verification hoping for a different result.
3. Return to implementation. Fix the issue, then re-run from Step 1 of the Gate Function.
4. Failure unrelated to the current changes (pre-existing flaky test, environment issue)? State it explicitly with evidence: show the failure also occurs on the base branch or is a known issue.

Pre-Commit Hook Failures

A failing pre-commit hook is a verification checkpoint, not an obstacle to route around. git commit --no-verify is forbidden when the current session's changes caused the failure -- fix the root cause. Permitted only when: (1) the failure reproduces on the base branch (show it), and (2) the user saw the failure first. A --no-verify the user never saw is a defeated check -- the same failure mode as claiming completion without evidence.

Rationalization Prevention

Reasoning about the outcome instead of running the command means the Gate is not satisfied. "Should work", "trivial change", "just a refactor", "new tests pass" (not "all tests pass"), "CI will catch it" -- all the same failure mode: substituting confidence for evidence. Any satisfaction expression ("looks good", "seems correct", "that should do it") or any positive statement about completion -- including paraphrases and synonyms -- triggers the Gate: spirit over letter, rephrasing a claim to avoid the trigger words does not exempt it from verification.

Completion Report Format

After verification passes, produce a structured report rather than an open-ended summary:

## Completion report

**Status**: DONE / DONE_WITH_CONCERNS / BLOCKED / NEEDS_CONTEXT

**Changes made**
- path/to/file.ts: [one-line description of what changed and why]
- path/to/other.ts: [one-line description]

**Things I didn't touch (intentionally)**
- [thing noticed but out of scope, with one-line reason]
- [adjacent issue deferred, with one-line reason]

**Potential concerns**
- [any risk, uncertainty, or open question the reviewer should know about]
- [or "none"]

**Verification evidence**
- [command]: [exit code / result summary]

DONE_WITH_CONCERNS makes the Potential concerns section mandatory; BLOCKED and NEEDS_CONTEXT must name the blocker or the missing information. The Things I didn't touch section is not optional -- if nothing was noticed, write "nothing noticed"; the goal is to prove scope was considered, not to pad the report.

References

• System-Wide Test Check -- blast-radius verification for task completion (callbacks, integration, orphaned state)

Integration

Referenced by /ia-work (before task completion, shipping, and merge/PR creation), ia-receiving-code-review (verify each fix before marking resolved), ia-debugging (before claiming a bug fixed), ia-writing-tests (tests as primary evidence), the ia-design-iterator and ia-figma-design-sync agents (verify rendering / Figma fidelity), and /ia-verify (full pre-PR verification pipeline).