Vet

/vet — the Seed Test

Goal: one idea in, one honest verdict out — PLANT, RESHAPE, or REFUSE — with a receipt, and an honest twin bred if the verdict isn't PLANT.

Resolve $ROOT and $GARDEN_DIR as in skills/seed/SKILL.md. Read $ROOT/doctrine/DOCTRINE.md (the gates and vocabularies) and $ROOT/doctrine/EXEMPLARS.md (calibration corpus).

Step 1 — Neutralize (strip the pitch)

Restate the idea as a mechanism spec with zero adjectives:

• parties: everyone the system touches — users, providers, platforms, bystanders, the commons
• flows: value, money, data, attention — who gives what to whom
• consent: for each party bearing a cost — informed? at this scale/purpose?
• builder keeps: what the builder gets out of it

If material facts are missing, ask the user now — a vet on a vague spec is worthless. Show the user the neutral spec in one compact block before proceeding; they must recognize their idea in it.

Step 2 — Blind vet

The invariant: the vetter sees only the neutral mechanism spec. No authorship, no enthusiasm, no "the user loves this", no garden history. The blindness is the point: it is the guard against vetting-by-flattery. The mechanism enforcing it varies by platform; the invariant never does:

• Claude Code: spawn the seed-vetter agent (auto-delegated; fresh context).
• Codex: invoke it explicitly — $seed-vetter, vet this mechanism spec: <spec> (TOML port in codex/agents/; explicit invocation is Codex's model).
• Other platforms: spawn an isolated subtask/fresh context containing only $ROOT/agents/seed-vetter.md's instructions plus the spec. If the platform has no isolated context at all, degrade honestly: run the gates yourself in a strictly spec-only frame and record "vetter_blindness": "degraded-inline" in the receipt.

The vetter returns strict JSON (schema in agents/seed-vetter.md).

Step 3 — Map gates → verdict (mechanical, done by you, not the agent)

• creates=TRANSFERRED load-bearing → REFUSE; removable → RESHAPE
• honest=DECEPTIVE → REFUSE; SHADED → RESHAPE
• serves=HOLLOW → REFUSE (nothing worth a life's hours); NICE_TO_HAVE → user's call, say so plainly
• endures=UNGUARDED → never blocks PLANT alone, but the charter (tend) MUST add guards
• PLANT requires: CREATED|EXCHANGED + TRANSPARENT + SERVES

Step 4 — Deliberate with the user

Walk the gates with the agent's evidence. The user may contest a gate with facts the spec missed — if so, amend the spec and re-run the blind vet (facts changed, so the judgment must). Never soften an enum to be kind; kindness here is accuracy. If it is a 9router, say "this is a 9router" and point at the corpus entry that matches.

Step 5 — Breed the honest twin (mandatory on RESHAPE/REFUSE)

Name the load-bearing impurity in one sentence. Keep the need, replace the mechanism: propose 1–3 honest twins, rough-vet each on the spot (enums only). A REFUSE that rescues the need into a PLANT-able twin is this skill's best outcome.

Step 6 — Receipt and garden

Write $GARDEN_DIR/receipts/<slug>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.json:

{"slug": "...", "date": "...", "spec": {...}, "gates": {...}, "verdict": "PLANT|RESHAPE|REFUSE",
 "load_bearing_impurity": "... or null", "honest_twins": [...], "deliberation_notes": "..."}

Update the garden entry (status VETTED:PLANT / VETTED:RESHAPE / REFUSED, gates, verdict, receipt path). Twins the user wants to keep get planted as new SEEDLINGs. Close: PLANT → offer skills/tend/SKILL.md.