Dos Verify Done Claims

Verify done-claims against ground truth, not the agent's word

Overview

When an AI agent says "done", "shipped", or "fixed", that is a claim, not a fact — and a claim the agent checks by re-reading its own work is consistency, not grounding. This skill replaces that self-report with a verdict from a witness the agent did not author: it shells the DOS kernel (dos verify, dos commit-audit) to confirm the claimed effect from git ancestry and the commit's actual diff. DOS is deterministic — no API key, no LLM, no network.

This skill adapts the DOS reference "witness-claim" pattern (anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel) into a host-agnostic screenplay.

When to Use This Skill

• Use when an agent reports a task/phase/feature as complete and you want that "done" confirmed from evidence before building on it.
• Use right after a commit, to confirm the commit's message matches its diff (catch a fix: that only touched a README, or a "tests pass" that deleted the assertions).
• Use when folding many sub-agents' results — verify each claimed effect instead of trusting the return string.
• Do not use it to judge whether code is correct — that is what the test suite is for. This skill checks did-the-claimed-thing-actually-ship.

How It Works

Step 1: Install the kernel (once)

pip install dos-kernel        # provides the `dos` CLI; deterministic, no key

Step 2: Audit the latest commit's claim vs its diff

A commit subject is forgeable (whoever wrote the message authored it); the files it touched are not (git did). dos commit-audit grades the subject against the actual diff:

dos commit-audit --workspace . HEAD

Read the verdict field: OK (the diff backs the claim's kind), CLAIM_UNWITNESSED (the subject's claim is not evidenced by the diff — treat the "done" as unproven), or ABSTAIN. This judges the kind of change, never correctness — run the tests for that.

Step 3: Verify a named phase actually shipped

If the agent claims a specific plan/phase landed, confirm it from git history rather than the transcript:

dos verify --workspace . PLAN PHASE

shipped: true with a source of registry or grep is real evidence; source: none means there is no positive evidence — accept that as "not shipped", not as a failure of the tool.

Step 4: Fold only confirmed effects

Accept the agent's "done" only when Step 2/3 corroborate it. If CLAIM_UNWITNESSED or shipped: false, the work is not done regardless of how confidently the agent narrated it — send it back.

Examples

Example 1: gate an agent's "I fixed the bug" claim

# The agent committed and said it's fixed. Check the diff backs the claim:
dos commit-audit --workspace . HEAD
# verdict OK            -> the change is of the claimed kind; now run the tests
# verdict CLAIM_UNWITNESSED -> the commit doesn't do what it says; reject

Example 2: confirm a feature phase shipped before closing a ticket

dos verify --workspace . AUTH AUTH2
# shipped: true, source: grep  -> a real ship commit exists; safe to close
# shipped: false, source: none -> no evidence; keep the ticket open

Best Practices

• ✅ Run dos commit-audit HEAD immediately after every agent commit.
• ✅ Treat source: none / CLAIM_UNWITNESSED as "not done", not as a tool error.
• ✅ Keep the test suite as the separate correctness gate — this skill checks shipping, not correctness.
• ❌ Don't accept a "done" because the agent's prose was confident.
• ❌ Don't use this to replace code review or testing.

Limitations

• This skill does not replace environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review.
• It checks whether a claimed change shipped / matches its diff — not whether the code is correct.
• dos verify reads git history; in a repo with no commits there is nothing to witness (it will honestly report source: none).
• Stop and ask for clarification if required inputs (a git repo, the dos CLI) are missing.

Security & Safety Notes

• This skill runs shell commands: pip install dos-kernel and the read-only dos verbs (dos commit-audit, dos verify). The dos verbs only read git history and the working tree — they do not mutate the repo, push, or network.
• pip install dos-kernel installs from PyPI. The distribution name is dos-kernel (the bare dos on PyPI is an unrelated package — do not install it). Pin a version in locked environments.
• Run in the repository you intend to adjudicate; the --workspace . argument scopes every verdict to that repo.

Common Pitfalls

• Problem: dos verify returns source: none and it looks like a failure. Solution: That is the honest "no evidence" verdict — it means the phase has no ship commit, so the claim is unproven. Re-stamp the real commit or keep the task open.
• Problem: Installing the wrong package. Solution: The PyPI name is dos-kernel, not dos.

Related Skills

• The upstream DOS reference screenplays (dos-witness-claim, dos-goal-gate) in anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel cover the multi-agent fan-out and self-stopping-agent variants of this same witness discipline.