laurigates Verify Before Plan
A premise is anything the orchestrator's plan asserts about the world without having looked: "there are 41 SKILL.md files that need editing," "the deprecated endpoint still has callers," "build is green on main," "the agent must rewrite the manifest." Before a wave of parallel subagents fans out against that premise, verify it with a small read-only probe. A wrong premise propagates to every brief in the wave and wastes an entire wave's worth of work — restarting is the only honest salvage.
When to Use This Skill
| Use this skill when... | Skip when... |
|---|---|
| About to dispatch ≥2 parallel agents whose briefs cite a number, state, or path | Single-agent delegation — verify inline |
| The premise was carried in from an earlier message and not re-checked this session | The premise was produced by a tool call earlier in this same session |
| The user's report describes a symptom; the plan cites a cause | Waves entirely independent of repo state (e.g. brainstorming) |
| The plan assumes a tool/library/agent does X based on its name or docs | The behaviour is covered by a passing test the wave will re-run |
| The plan inherits a premise from another agent's return contract | The return contract already cites file:line evidence for the premise |
This skill sits before parallel-agent-dispatch in the dispatch
sequence. parallel-agent-dispatch covers the contract; this skill covers
the assumption the contract is built on.
The Verification Protocol
Step 1: Name the premise
State the load-bearing facts in one or two sentences, in the form the wave's briefs will reference. Numbers, paths, and "does X" claims must be explicit — "all the affected plugins" is not yet a premise.
Step 2: Pick the cheapest verifier
| Premise shape | Verifier |
|---|---|
| File count / "N occurrences of …" | Glob or Grep -c directly from the main thread |
| "Does this tool/agent do X?" | Dispatch one read-only general-purpose agent: "Report what <thing> actually does, with file:line citations" |
| "Build is green / artefact exists" | One Bash call (gh pr checks, ls path, git log --branches) |
| "User's bug is X" | Read the failing log; do not patch the symptom |
| Manifest / counter snapshot | Read the file and quote the relevant lines |
Inline the verifier if it is one to three tool calls. Use a one-shot investigation agent only when the answer requires multi-file synthesis.
Step 3: Verifier return contract
The verifier — whether inline calls or a dispatched agent — must report:
## Premise
<one-line restatement of what is being checked>
## Evidence
- file:line — <quoted finding>
- file:line — <quoted finding>
## Verdict
- confirmed | refuted | partial: <what changed>
- exact count / value: <N>
- sample paths: <up to 5>
## Implicit assumptions surfaced
- <assumptions the verifier had to make to answer>
- empty is fine — section must exist
Refuse to dispatch the wave until this report exists. "I'll check while dispatching" loses the salvage argument before it starts.
Step 4: Diff verdict against premise
If confirmed, dispatch as planned. If refuted or partial, revise the
plan: shrink the file scope, re-allocate per-agent IDs, drop agents that no
longer have work, re-write the brief that cites the refuted fact. Only then
dispatch.
Anti-patterns
| Premise | How it fails | Verifier |
|---|---|---|
| "There are 41 SKILL.md files needing edits" | Actual was 28 — some plugins have no skills; 13 agents had empty briefs | Glob("**/SKILL.md") then count |
| "git-repo-agent supports X" (from the name) | Name ≠ behaviour; agent did not implement X | Read agents/git-repo-agent/SKILL.md |
| "The user says the bug is X" | Bug was a config typo two layers up; the X patch did nothing | Read the failing log / repro |
| "The plan says clear stuck Jobs" | Real root cause was an IdP password mismatch in ConfigMap; jobs were a symptom | Re-spelunk with one read-only agent |
| "Manifest counter is at WO-012" | Counter was bumped by a coworker mid-session | Read the manifest as the last act before allocation |
| "Build is green" (from morning standup) | Broke an hour ago; one wave-member tripped over the failing step | gh pr checks or gh run list |
| "All callers of the deprecated API are gone" | Two remained in a vendored copy outside the search root | Grep with a wide-enough path |
The unifying pattern: the premise was true at some past moment, but the current session has not confirmed it. Time is the silent invalidator.
Composition
| With … | Slot it in by … |
|---|---|
parallel-agent-dispatch |
Verify before the worktree-preflight; preflight assumes the file scope is right |
wave-based-dispatch |
Verify per wave — a Phase-1 wave's return contract is a premise for Phase 2 |
exclusive-lock-dispatch |
Verify the lock-holder list is current; locks come and go |
agent-teams |
The Lead Preflight Checklist's "file-scope and pin-budget" entries are premises |
Quick Reference
Orchestrator checklist (before any parallel dispatch)
- Premise named in one or two sentences with numbers and paths
- Verifier picked (inline call ≤ 3, otherwise one read-only agent)
- Verifier return contract followed (Premise / Evidence / Verdict / Assumptions)
- Verdict
confirmed— or plan revised before dispatch - Implicit assumptions logged for the wave's briefs
Common mistakes
| Mistake | Correct approach |
|---|---|
| "Based on the name, X probably does Y" | Dispatch a read-only probe; cite file:line |
| "The user says the bug is X, so we patch X" | Read the failing repro before any patch |
| "The plan's remediation is X" | Verify the plan's premise; remediations inherit its truth-value |
| Verifying after dispatch ("I'll check while they work") | Verify first — re-running a wave costs more than the probe |
| Skipping the Verdict line — just summarising | The wave's briefs need a copy-pasteable fact, not a narrative |
Related
parallel-agent-dispatch— the dispatch contract whose preflight this skill protectswave-based-dispatch— per-wave premise verification fits cleanly between phasesexclusive-lock-dispatch— lock inventory is itself a premise.claude/rules/regression-testing.md— landing a verifier as a script check when a premise-failure recurs- Motivating evidence: issue #1283
— aggregate
wrong_approachandinitial_misdiagnosissignals across 284 sessions