Truth and verification
The SOP turns "don't guess" into a workflow. A claim is either verified, labeled unknown, or not used.
This page is the verification contract behind implementation summaries, setup claims, reviews, and handoffs.
Mental model
| SOP section | Contract |
|---|---|
2.0 Compatibility | classify and state compatibility before edits; no unrequested shims, aliases, wrappers, or deprecation paths |
2.1 External Truth | inspect local source, binaries, versions, docs, and locally-verifiable guesses before relying on behavior; hypotheses cannot gate downstream steps |
2.2 Runtime Truth | setup questions require source config → rendered config → consumer → safe live probe |
2.3 Completion | stop only after locally-verifiable unknowns are resolved |
2.4 Complete Artifacts | compacted/sliced/capped output is an index; recover raw context before relying on content or composing human-visible output |
2.5 Self-Report Skepticism | a model's own rationale, chain-of-thought, done, status, and plan are hypotheses about the process, not evidence |
Self-report skepticism also applies to any sub-agent, reviewer, or verifier report. Verify the outcome against an independent signal.
Using it
Unknowns are resolved in this order:
- local probes.
- local source/tests.
- official docs fetched live.
- user questions.
When a public cloneable codebase can answer a web/source question, inspect it locally with rg, file reads, and git log.
Compacted output without full recovery is a hypothesis, not a fact.
Evidence ladder
| Question type | Required evidence |
|---|---|
| CLI behavior | binary path and provenance, then --version, --help, or source |
| Library behavior | exact package/version from lockfile, import path, and local implementation when available |
| External claim (web/docs) | primary-source URL and exact supporting quote; numeric literals verbatim in the quote; per-claim verification before multi-source synthesis |
| Runtime setup | source declaration, applied config, consumer implementation, safe live probe |
| Build/test failure | full output when compacted markers or capped lists appear |
| Review judgment | base truth, change truth, and smallest safe repro/probe when needed |
| Freeform completion | inline evidence by default; ,proof only for a requested receipt, auditable security/auth, data-migration, or destructive effect, or named handoff/resume consumer; never as a late wrapper |
Reference: compatibility line
Every implementation summary includes one of:
| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
none | no compatibility path added/removed |
removed (requested) | user asked to remove/replace old behavior |
kept existing (requested) | user explicitly asked to preserve old behavior |