# Reviewing Platform Ecosystem Prior Art Survey

> Use when reviewing an artifact produced by platform-ecosystem-prior-art-survey — a vocabulary map, one angle's search output, one mechanism's extract record, or the decision index and its report — and deciding whether it can be built on. Judges numbered conditions covering slug provenance, applicability verdicts, verbatim query recording, the zero-hit cell, cause evidence on every unreached source, enumeration framing, and the anecdote-aggregation trap — plus whether a reversibility call is right, whether an authority band means the platform PRESCRIBES it, and whether a divergence was presented rather than resolved by dropping a source. Emits exactly one VERDICT approve or revise with findings naming their condition. It does not revise a thin-but- honest result: on this corpus most marketplaces publish no ranking function, and recording that is the expected outcome. Keywords: prior-art review, platform ecosystem review, survey quality gate, coverage review.

- Skill: `bm629/reviewing-platform-ecosystem-prior-art-survey` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 11 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add bm629/reviewing-platform-ecosystem-prior-art-survey`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/bm629/reviewing-platform-ecosystem-prior-art-survey/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Docs & Writing
- Author: bm629 (https://skillmd.com/u/bm629)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/bm629/reviewing-platform-ecosystem-prior-art-survey

---


# Reviewing a platform-ecosystem prior-art artifact (wave 1)

You are the judgment half of a two-part gate. The deterministic half has already run: shape,
enums, ranges, arithmetic and reconciliation are checked by
`validate_platform_ecosystem_prior_art.py`, and an artifact reaching you has passed it at exit 0.

**So never report what the validator already checks.** If your finding could have been produced by
the script, it is not a review finding — and repeating it costs a revise round on work that was
correct.

## What you judge

`references/conditions.md` is the single source of the bar. Read it and judge against it. The
producer skill points at it by name and deliberately restates nothing from it, because a restated
bar is a bar that drifts.

## Your evidence, and what an ungrounded finding costs

Your evidence is the artifact, the schemas, the source registry and the angle reference for the
angle under review. **Three of those four live in the PRODUCER package**, not this one:

| evidence | where |
| --- | --- |
| the artifact | handed to you in the task |
| **the wave-0 vocabulary map** | handed to you alongside a search output — it is a separate input, not part of the artifact |
| the schemas | `platform-ecosystem-prior-art-survey/schemas/` |
| the source registry | `platform-ecosystem-prior-art-survey/references/source-registry.yaml` |
| the angle reference | `platform-ecosystem-prior-art-survey/references/angles/<angle_id>.md` |

**C2 needs the map** — its whole test is the candidate's evidence against the map row its slug
points at, and without the map every C2 finding would have to be demoted to an Observation, which
would make the "two platforms collapsed onto one row" defect unreportable by anyone: the validator
checks slug MEMBERSHIP only.

**C3, C4, C9 and C15 need the producer package.** C9 needs the angle's source list to know a cell
is missing, and deriving that list from the artifact is circular — an artifact that omits a source
omits it from any list you read off it. C3 and C4 need the registry to check a precondition was
transcribed rather than paraphrased. **If you cannot reach what a condition names, say so and emit
no verdict on that condition** rather than downgrading it silently.

**Anything you cannot ground in one of those is an OBSERVATION, not a finding** — say it as one, plainly, and
do not attach a condition to it.

An ungrounded finding costs a revise round on correct work, and at the revision cap it parks the
ticket. A parked ticket is a human's time. That is the price of guessing, and it is why the
evidence rule is stated per condition rather than assumed.

## Proportionality

A thin result is not a failed result. A corpus with three comparable platforms yields three, and a
survey that says so honestly is complete. **Revise only on a named gap against a numbered
condition** — never because the artifact could have been longer.

## Output

Findings, each naming its condition, then exactly one terminal line:

```
VERDICT: approve
```

or

```
VERDICT: revise
```

Nothing after it.

## Upstream remedies

If a finding's remedy lies OUTSIDE the file this artifact's author was asked to write — an upstream map, a
registry row, another angle's output — the producer cannot perform it, and ordering the revision
anyway burns three cycles and ends somewhere that names neither the artifact nor the
inconsistency. The test is contractual, not subjective: **is the fix inside this file?**

So label the finding `UPSTREAM:` and **name the exact file and field that must change**. An
"upstream" finding that names no target is not one — it is a finding you could not localise, and
it belongs in Observations.

**A file whose every finding is UPSTREAM gets `approve`.** You judge THIS artifact against its own
contract; if it satisfies that contract and the defect is elsewhere, it is not the defective thing,
and the labelled findings are what carries the problem onward. Reserve `revise` for a remedy the
producer can actually perform. (There is no third verdict. Escalating past the author is whoever
dispatched you to decide, not you, and no reviewing skill in this family emits one.)