Spec Clarify

Codex compatibility note:

• Invoke repository skills with $skill-name in Codex; this mirrored copy rewrites legacy Claude /skill-name references.
• Task tracker mandate: BEFORE executing any workflow or skill step, create/update task tracking for all steps and keep it synchronized as progress changes.
• User-question prompts mean to ask the user directly in Codex.
• Ignore Claude-specific mode-switch instructions when they appear.
• Strict execution contract: when a user explicitly invokes a skill, execute that skill protocol as written.
• Subagent authorization: when a skill is user-invoked or AI-detected and its protocol requires subagents, that skill activation authorizes use of the required spawn_agent subagent(s) for that task.
• Do not skip, reorder, or merge protocol steps unless the user explicitly approves the deviation first.
• For workflow skills, execute each listed child-skill step explicitly and report step-by-step evidence.
• If a required step/tool cannot run in this environment, stop and ask the user before adapting.

Codex Project-Reference Loading (No Hooks)

Codex uses static project-reference loading instead of runtime-injected project docs. When coding, planning, debugging, testing, or reviewing, open project docs explicitly using this routing.

Always read:

• docs/project-config.json (project-specific paths, commands, modules, and workflow/test settings)
• docs/project-reference/docs-index-reference.md (routes to the full docs/project-reference/* catalog)
• docs/project-reference/lessons.md (always-on guardrails and anti-patterns)

Missing/stale context route: If docs/project-config.json, the docs index, lessons.md, CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, or any task-required reference doc is missing or stale, auto-run $project-init or the narrow setup route ($project-config, $docs-init, $scan-all, $scan --target=<key>, $claude-md-init) before ordinary project-specific work. If Codex mirrors or AGENTS.md are missing/stale, ask the user to run $sync-codex; do not auto-run it.

Situation-based docs:

• Project structure/architecture/tech-stack/deployment/setup (any layer — backend, frontend, or infra): project-structure-reference.md
• Backend/CQRS/API/domain/entity changes: backend-patterns-reference.md, domain-entities-reference.md
• Frontend/UI/styling/design-system: frontend-patterns-reference.md, scss-styling-guide.md, design-system/README.md
• Spec authoring, docs/specs/ pathing, or TC format: feature-spec-reference.md, spec-system-reference.md, spec-principles.md
• Behavior/public-contract changes or spec-test-code sync: workflow-spec-test-code-cycle-reference.md plus the spec docs above
• Derived spec indexes/ERDs/reimplementation guides: spec-system-reference.md and source Feature Specs under docs/specs/
• Integration test implementation/review: integration-test-reference.md
• E2E test implementation/review: e2e-test-reference.md
• Code review/audit work: code-review-rules.md plus domain docs above based on changed files

Do not read all docs blindly. Start from docs-index-reference.md, then open only relevant files for the task.

[BLOCKING] Execute skill steps in declared order. NEVER skip, reorder, or merge steps without explicit user approval. [BLOCKING] Before each step or sub-skill call, update task tracking: set in_progress when step starts, set completed when step ends. [BLOCKING] Every completed/skipped step MUST include brief evidence or explicit skip reason. [BLOCKING] If Task tools are unavailable, create and maintain an equivalent step-by-step plan tracker with the same status transitions.

Quick Summary

Goal: Close the gap between a spec artifact that is internally well-formed and one that is COMPLETE-AND-CONFIRMED against the broader discovered system — so the artifact (a freshly-authored Feature Spec, an existing canonical spec headed for decomposition, or a refined idea + §8 test-specs) is finalized only after every related/affected behavior is reflected, every needed and pre-existing invariant is captured, every encoded assumption is classified, and every NON-OBVIOUS or CONFLICTING decision has been confirmed by the user through an exhaustive-but-budget-bounded blocking clarification gate.

Summary:

• Context-aware (Phase 0): detects which artifact it is validating — AUTHORED-SPEC (idea-to-spec: a freshly-authored, provisional: true §1-8), EXISTING-SPEC (spec-to-pbi: a non-provisional canonical §1-8 headed for decomposition), or TEST-SPEC (idea-to-pbi deep mode: a refined idea + §8 TCs, no §1-7 draft) — and tunes which sections/categories it audits. The detection precedence + ambiguous→ask the user directly fallback are in Phase 0; the category catalog + per-context audit matrix live in references/clarify-interview.md.
• Main steps (read-this-if-nothing-else — run in order, never skip/merge): Phase 0 detect context + resolve budget → Step 0 resolve the 4 inputs (artifact, spec-discovery landscape, originating idea, domain-analysis), flag any missing as a finding → Step 1 completeness pass vs the discovered SYSTEM (cross-ref, implied coverage, §8 TCs, invariants, UI interaction surface) → Step 2 category-driven hypothesis/decision audit — walk EVERY applicable category, classify each item OBVIOUS / NON-OBVIOUS / CONFLICTS → Step 3 brainstorm materially-changing open questions + adversarial pre-mortem → Step 4 BLOCKING ask the user directly gate on NON-OBVIOUS + CONFLICTS + high-impact within the MIN-MAX budget → Step 5 apply confirmed decisions to the artifact + Decisions Log → Step 6 validate own findings via $why-review --validate-findings, emit CLARIFIED / NEEDS-AUTHORING-FIX.
• Runs in the validation slot of its flow — AFTER the artifact exists (and, for AUTHORED, after $artifact-review checks the spec in isolation against the artifact-facing mandates (M1-M5 + M7) and $why-review checks rationale). This skill adds the two things neither does: completeness-vs-the-discovered-system, and a BLOCKING user-confirmation loop on every non-obvious decision.
• It is NOT a duplicate of artifact-review: that one judges the artifact against itself (sections present, ACs testable, M1-M5 + M7 clean). spec-clarify judges it against the SYSTEM (does it reflect every related spec, every existing invariant, every operation the idea implies) and against the USER (are the encoded assumptions actually what the user wants).
• Exhaustive within a budget: walk EVERY applicable validation category (per the matrix), classify every assumption/default/scope-boundary/ambiguity the artifact encodes as OBVIOUS (document and proceed), NON-OBVIOUS (must confirm with the user), or CONFLICTS (disagrees with a discovered spec or invariant → must reconcile), then route NON-OBVIOUS + CONFLICTS + high-impact items to the gate up to a configured Spec Validation: questions=MIN-MAX budget (per-context defaults when absent). NEVER silently pick a NON-OBVIOUS decision — the whole value is the active question; the budget (not "ask only a few") is the fatigue control.
• Runs INLINE on the main agent (NOT a sub-agent): the Step 4 clarification gate is a BLOCKING ask the user directly loop, and ask the user directly only works on the main interactive agent — a sub-agent cannot ask the user. Before applying confirmed decisions, validate this skill's OWN findings through the terminal $why-review --validate-findings gate, at parity with the other review-family skills.

Workflow:

0. Phase 0 — Spec-Context Detection — detect AUTHORED-SPEC / EXISTING-SPEC / TEST-SPEC and resolve the question budget; ambiguous context → 1 ask the user directly to confirm
1. Completeness pass — cross-reference the artifact against the discovered system landscape (per-context emphasis); find missing stories/AC/rules/TCs and uncovered invariants
2. Hypothesis & decision audit (category-driven) — walk every applicable category in references/clarify-interview.md; enumerate and classify every encoded assumption as OBVIOUS / NON-OBVIOUS / CONFLICTS
3. Brainstorm open questions — questions whose answers would change the artifact + a pre-mortem
4. Clarification gate — BLOCKING ask the user directly on NON-OBVIOUS + CONFLICTS + high-impact items, exhaustive within the MIN-MAX budget (≤4/call, recommended-first)
5. Apply — write confirmed decisions back into the artifact + a Decisions Log
6. Report + verdict — CLARIFIED or NEEDS-AUTHORING-FIX, after validating own findings

Key Rules:

• Detect the validation context FIRST (Phase 0); it tunes which sections/categories are audited and the question budget. Ambiguous → confirm with one ask the user directly.
• Completeness is judged against the SYSTEM, not the artifact alone — every related/affected behavior must be reflected.
• Walk EVERY applicable category (breadth is mandatory); route NON-OBVIOUS + CONFLICTS + high-impact items to the gate up to the configured/default budget. The budget — not "surface only a few" — is the fatigue control.
• NON-OBVIOUS and CONFLICTS decisions MUST go to the user; only OBVIOUS decisions are documented-and-proceeded.
• Runs INLINE (no execution-mode: subagent) because the clarification gate needs ask the user directly, which requires the main interactive agent.
• This complements — never duplicates — artifact-review (isolation / M1-M5 + M7) and why-review (rationale).

Be skeptical. Apply critical thinking, sequential thinking. Every claim needs traced proof, confidence percentages (Idea should be more than 80%).

Why This Skill Exists

A Feature Spec can be internally perfect — all 8 sections present, every AC testable, every prose line tech-agnostic — and still be WRONG, because:

1. It silently omits a related behavior the discovered system already owns (a spec that doesn't reflect an adjacent capability's invariant ships a contradiction).
2. It encodes a default, scope boundary, or ambiguous behavior that the AUTHOR picked but the USER never confirmed (the most expensive specs fail not on what they said, but on what they assumed without asking).
3. It leaves open questions whose answers would materially change §1-8 — and nobody surfaced them before code started.

artifact-review --type=spec-tests and --type=design check the spec in isolation against the artifact-facing mandates (M1-M5 + M7 — M6 binds the reviewer, not the artifact) and an adversarial section-quality checklist. why-review checks the rationale of decisions already made. Neither one (a) cross-references the spec against the broader discovered system, nor (b) actively ASKS THE USER to confirm the non-obvious choices. spec-clarify is the gate that does both — completeness-vs-system plus a blocking human-confirmation loop — so the spec is finalized confirmed, not merely well-formed.

Delineation from sibling skills (so reviewers see NO duplication):

Why not just extend artifact-review? Self-review cannot ask the user, and adding a blocking interactive gate to a skill designed to run as a fresh sub-agent breaks the sub-agent contract (a sub-agent cannot run ask the user directly). The completeness-vs-system pass and the human-confirmation loop need a distinct, inline invocation point.

Alternatives Considered

Risk Assessment

Phase 0: Spec-Context Detection (run FIRST)

Before resolving inputs, detect WHICH artifact is being validated — the context tunes which sections/categories are audited and the question budget. The full per-context audit matrix + category catalog live in references/clarify-interview.md.

Detection precedence: full §1-8 + provisional: true → AUTHORED-SPEC; full §1-8 + NOT provisional → EXISTING-SPEC; only §8 / refined-idea (no §1-7 draft) → TEST-SPEC. Ambiguous → 1 ask the user directly to confirm the context before auditing.

Question budget: read the injected Spec Validation: questions=MIN-MAX line (workflow injectContext supplies it per flow). When absent (standalone run), fall back to the per-context defaults in references/clarify-interview.md — AUTHORED-SPEC 5-10, EXISTING-SPEC 4-8, TEST-SPEC 3-6. The budget bounds the Step 4 gate: ask ≥MIN when ≥MIN genuine decisions exist, never exceed MAX.

State Context: {AUTHORED-SPEC | EXISTING-SPEC | TEST-SPEC} | Budget: {MIN-MAX} (injected | default) before Step 0.

Inputs (Step 0)

Resolve and confirm these inputs exist BEFORE the completeness pass. A missing input is a finding, not a reason to guess.

1. The artifact under validation — resolved per the detected context: AUTHORED-SPEC / EXISTING-SPEC → the full §1-8 Feature Spec (§1 Overview, §2 Glossary, §3 User Stories & Acceptance Criteria, §4 Business Rules with [HARD]/[SOFT] markers, §5 Domain Model, §6 Process Flows & Interaction Surface, §7 Permissions & Roles, §8 Test Specifications TC-{FEATURE}-{NNN}); TEST-SPEC → the refined idea + the §8 TC set (no §1-7 draft yet). Read docs/project-reference/feature-spec-reference.md + spec-system-reference.md + spec-principles.md first.
2. The spec-discovery landscape report — plans/{plan-dir}/research/spec-discovery-{slug}.md (Related Specs, Related Code, Affected Specs, Gaps, Invariant Landscape, Open Questions), the investigation of related/overlapping/affected specs + code. This is the baseline against which completeness is judged. For TEST-SPEC the landscape also comes from spec-discovery (present in the idea-to-pbi deep-mode sequence). If it is absent (skill run standalone), fall back to scout + investigate plus the derived $spec-index artifacts (index / ERD / reimplementation guide) under docs/specs/, and flag the absence as a finding.
3. The originating idea / brainstorm — the requirement that the artifact is meant to satisfy; its implied operations and edge cases drive the missing-coverage check.
4. The domain-analysis output — bounded contexts, aggregates, entities, domain events, and the invariants the artifact must respect.

State Inputs resolved: ... | Missing (flag as finding): ... before Step 1.

Workflow

Run Phase 0 (Spec-Context Detection) above first — it sets the context + budget that the steps below consume.

0. Inputs — resolve the four inputs above (artifact resolved per the detected context); flag any missing one as a finding.

1. Completeness pass (vs system) — judge the artifact against the discovered landscape, NOT against itself, weighting the sections the context emphasizes (see the per-context matrix in references/clarify-interview.md):

   • Cross-reference completeness — every related/affected spec from the landscape is reflected (a behavior the system already owns and this feature touches must appear, or its absence must be deliberate and noted). For TEST-SPEC, judge the refined idea + §8 set against the landscape.
   • Implied coverage — missing user stories / acceptance criteria / business rules the originating idea implies but the artifact omits.
   • Test-coverage completeness — missing §8 TCs versus the implied operations + their edge cases (presence/scope only).
   • Invariant coverage — every NEEDED invariant (this feature must establish) AND every EXISTING invariant the artifact must respect (from domain-analysis / adjacent specs) is captured; each [HARD] §4 rule has at least one §8 property/invariant TC. This is a CROSS-CHECK that the property TC exists — defer the detailed TC-quality audit (universally-quantified property, boundary counter-case, etc.) to artifact-review --type=spec-tests.
   • Interaction surface completeness (UI-bearing specs) — judge §6's interaction surface against the implied UI: every view a user story needs is in the §6.2 view inventory by UX role; navigation between views (§6.3) has no dangling entry/exit; each view's observable states (§6.4 — empty/loading/populated/error/success/permission-denied) are present or deliberately absent; every UI-bearing user story has a §6.5 click-path. Backend-only specs must state the §6 skip reason. Presence/scope only — visual fidelity stays in the companion design artifact.

2. Hypothesis & decision audit (category-driven) — walk EVERY applicable category for the detected context (the 9-category catalog + per-context matrix in references/clarify-interview.md); for each, run its audit prompts to surface every assumption, default value, scope boundary, and ambiguous behavior the artifact encodes. Classify each:

   • OBVIOUS — a single reasonable reading any competent reader shares → document it in the Decisions Log and proceed.
   • NON-OBVIOUS — more than one defensible reading, or a default the user has not confirmed → candidate for the Step 4 gate.
   • CONFLICTS — disagrees with a discovered landscape spec or an existing invariant → MUST be reconciled (and surfaced to the user). Default to NON-OBVIOUS when the classification itself is unclear. Probing breadth is exhaustive (every applicable category); asking breadth is the budget.

3. Brainstorm open questions — questions whose answers would MATERIALLY change the artifact (scope, a default, an invariant boundary, an actor/permission). Run an adversarial pre-mortem: "this artifact ships and the feature fails in production within 3 months — what spec gap caused it?" Each pre-mortem failure that maps to a real gap becomes either a NON-OBVIOUS question or a completeness finding.

   Interaction Surface category (UI-bearing specs): treat each of these as a gate candidate — an ambiguous view (its UX role or purpose has more than one defensible reading), a missing observable state (a view whose error/empty/permission-denied behavior the spec leaves unstated), and an unmapped click-path (a UI-bearing user story with no §6.5 step path, or a navigation transition with no business trigger). Classify each OBVIOUS / NON-OBVIOUS / CONFLICTS like any other; route NON-OBVIOUS + CONFLICTS to the gate within the budget. Ask about UX intent only — never about framework/route/CSS/component-class detail (that belongs to the companion design artifact).

4. Clarification gate (BLOCKING ask the user directly) — present the NON-OBVIOUS + CONFLICTS + high-impact items to the user as structured options, exhaustive within the MIN-MAX budget from Phase 0: ask ≥MIN questions when ≥MIN genuine decisions exist, never exceed MAX, ≤4 options per call, the recommended option FIRST, issue multiple ask the user directly calls when there are more than 4 decisions. When fewer than MIN genuine decisions exist, ask only the genuine ones and record "below-MIN: only N real decisions" — NEVER invent filler. Capture each answer. NEVER silently pick a NON-OBVIOUS decision — the active question is the entire point of this gate.

5. Apply — write the confirmed decisions back into the relevant artifact sections AND record them in an "Open Questions / Decisions Log" (resolved decisions with the user's choice + rationale, plus residual items still below 80% confidence). For AUTHORED-SPEC/EXISTING-SPEC, when the confirmed answers reveal material gaps, loop the spec author via $spec [mode=update] to re-author the affected sections, then re-run Step 1 against the updated spec. For EXISTING-SPEC this skill does NOT itself re-author — confirmed changes route through $spec [mode=update]; for TEST-SPEC the decisions feed PBI decomposition + any $spec [mode=tests] refinement.

6. Report + verdict — before applying decisions, run $why-review --validate-findings <report-path> on THIS skill's own findings (validate-before-fix discipline, at parity with artifact-review / plan-review); fix/drop any finding the gate flags, then apply only validated decisions. Write the report to plans/reports/spec-clarify-{date}.md and emit a verdict:

   • CLARIFIED — every NON-OBVIOUS/CONFLICTS decision confirmed by the user, completeness gaps resolved or accepted, no residual blocking question.
   • NEEDS-AUTHORING-FIX — material completeness gap or unreconciled conflict requires re-authoring via $spec [mode=update] before the spec can be finalized.

Output

## Spec Clarification Report

**Spec:** {spec path}
**Date:** {date}
**Verdict:** CLARIFIED | NEEDS-AUTHORING-FIX
**Confidence:** {X%} — {what was verified vs. what remains residual}

### Completeness (vs discovered system)

| Area                                   | Status | Gap / Evidence (`file:line` or spec/section ref)                              |
| -------------------------------------- | ------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Related/affected specs reflected       | ✅/❌  | {which related behavior is/ isn't reflected}                                  |
| Implied stories / AC / rules           | ✅/❌  | {missing item the idea implies}                                               |
| §8 TC coverage vs operations           | ✅/❌  | {operation/edge case with no TC}                                              |
| Invariant coverage (needed + existing) | ✅/❌  | {`[HARD]` rule without a §8 property TC, or existing invariant not respected} |

### Hypothesis & Decision Audit

| #   | Encoded assumption / default / boundary | Class (OBVIOUS / NON-OBVIOUS / CONFLICTS) | Evidence |
| --- | --------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- | -------- |
| 1   | {assumption}                            | {class}                                   | {ref}    |

### Open Questions (pre-mortem + materially-changing)

1. {question — what changes in §1-8 depending on the answer}

### Decisions Log

| Decision               | User's confirmed choice              | Applied to | Residual confidence     |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------ | ---------- | ----------------------- |
| {non-obvious decision} | {answer by asking the user directly} | §{n}       | {>=80% / <80% residual} |

### Verdict

{CLARIFIED | NEEDS-AUTHORING-FIX} — {evidence-based justification; if NEEDS-AUTHORING-FIX, the exact `$spec [mode=update]` scope}

Key Rules

• Detect the context FIRST (Phase 0) — AUTHORED-SPEC / EXISTING-SPEC / TEST-SPEC tunes which sections/categories are audited and the question budget; ambiguous → 1 ask the user directly to confirm before auditing.
• Walk every applicable category, ask within the budget — probing breadth is exhaustive (the 9-category catalog × the per-context matrix in references/clarify-interview.md); the Spec Validation: questions=MIN-MAX budget (per-context default when absent) caps how many reach the gate. Never invent filler to hit MIN; never exceed MAX.
• Completeness is judged against the SYSTEM — every related/affected behavior from the discovered landscape must be reflected, or its absence deliberately noted. The artifact passing in isolation is NOT enough.
• NON-OBVIOUS and CONFLICTS go to the user — only OBVIOUS decisions are documented-and-proceeded; ambiguity in the classification itself defaults to NON-OBVIOUS.
• NEVER silently pick a non-obvious decision — the blocking ask the user directly gate is the entire value of this skill.
• Runs INLINE, not as a sub-agent — the clarification gate needs ask the user directly, which only the main interactive agent can run; do NOT add execution-mode: subagent.
• Complements, never duplicates — artifact-review owns isolation/M1-M5 + M7, why-review owns rationale; cross-check the [HARD]→§8 mapping only and defer the detailed TC-quality audit to artifact-review --type=spec-tests.
• Validate before applying — run $why-review --validate-findings on this skill's own findings before rewriting any §1-8 section.
• Evidence-based — every completeness gap, classification, and conflict cites file:line / a spec section / an invariant ref with a confidence percentage.

[IMPORTANT] Use task tracking to break ALL work into small tasks BEFORE starting — including a final review task to verify completeness and that every non-obvious decision was confirmed.

Evidence Gate: MANDATORY IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION — every claim requires file:line proof or traced evidence with confidence percentage (>80% to act).

Nested Task Expansion Contract — For workflow-step invocation, the [Workflow] ... row is only a parent container; the child skill still creates visible phase tasks.

1. Call the current task list first. If a matching active parent workflow row exists, set nested=true and record parentTaskId; otherwise run standalone.
2. Create one task per declared phase before phase work. When nested, prefix subjects [N.M] $skill-name — phase.
3. When nested, link the parent with TaskUpdate(parentTaskId, addBlockedBy: [childIds]).
4. Orchestrators must pre-expand a child skill's phase list and link the workflow row before invoking that child skill or sub-agent.
5. Mark exactly one child in_progress before work and completed immediately after evidence is written.
6. Complete the parent only after all child tasks are completed or explicitly cancelled with reason.

Blocked until: the current task list done, child phases created, parent linked when nested, first child marked in_progress.

Project Reference Docs Gate — Run after task-tracking bootstrap and before target/source file reads, grep, edits, or analysis. Project docs override generic framework assumptions.

1. Identify scope: file types, domain area, and operation.
2. Read docs/project-config.json first — the project's machine-readable map. It is the single source of truth for THIS repo (modules/paths, framework + search keywords, test/E2E/integration run-commands, design system, architecture rules, workflow patterns); ground exact paths, run-commands, and conventions on it before investigating, planning, or coding — never assume framework defaults (CLAUDE.md + reference docs are derived from it). If it — or the docs index, lessons.md, CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, or any required reference doc — is missing or stale, auto-run $project-init or the narrow route ($project-config, $docs-init, $scan-all, $scan --target=<key>, $claude-md-init) first; if Codex mirrors or AGENTS.md are stale, ask the user to run $sync-codex (never auto-run it).
3. Required docs by trigger: always docs/project-reference/lessons.md; doc lookup docs-index-reference.md; review code-review-rules.md; backend/CQRS/API backend-patterns-reference.md; domain/entity domain-entities-reference.md; frontend/UI frontend-patterns-reference.md; styles/design scss-styling-guide.md + design-system/design-system-canonical.md; integration tests integration-test-reference.md; E2E e2e-test-reference.md; feature docs/specs feature-spec-reference.md + spec-system-reference.md + spec-principles.md; behavior/public-contract/spec-test-code sync workflow-spec-test-code-cycle-reference.md; derived spec index/ERD/reimplementation guides spec-system-reference.md + source Feature Specs under docs/specs/; architecture/new area project-structure-reference.md.
4. Read every required doc, then before target work state: Reference docs read: ... | Not applicable: ....

Ready when: scope evaluated, docs/project-config.json consulted, required docs checked/read or setup route completed, lessons.md confirmed, citation emitted.

Task Tracking & External Report Persistence — Bootstrap this before execution; then run project-reference doc prefetch before target/source work.

1. Create a small task breakdown before target file reads, grep, edits, or analysis. On context loss, inspect the current task list first.
2. Mark one task in_progress before work and completed immediately after evidence; never batch transitions.
3. For plan/review work, create plans/reports/{skill}-{YYMMDD}-{HHmm}-{slug}.md before first finding.
4. Append findings after each file/section/decision and synthesize from the report file at the end.
5. Final output cites Full report: plans/reports/{filename}.

Blocked until: task breakdown exists, report path declared for plan/review work, first finding persisted before the next finding.

Critical Thinking Mindset — Apply critical thinking, sequential thinking. Every claim needs traced proof, confidence >80% to act. Anti-hallucination: Never present guess as fact — cite sources for every claim, admit uncertainty freely, self-check output for errors, cross-reference independently, stay skeptical of own confidence — certainty without evidence root of all hallucination.