Skill · CLAUDE.md rule

Verify Before You Call It Done

A forcing function so the agent proves a fix instead of claiming it.

TypeCLAUDE.md rule

You ask the agent for a fix. It comes back fast: "Done — the button shows now." The diff looks plausible, so you move on. Two hours later the button is still invisible. The diff was real; the result was not. Somewhere between the code and the screen, a stale cache or a CSS override quietly ate it — and nobody looked.

That gap has one cause: the agent handed you a claim and you accepted it as evidence. A confident "done" is the cheapest thing a model produces — it costs nothing and proves nothing. Watch what changes when you make proof the price of saying "done":

✕ Without the rule

Agent: "Fixed it — looks right."

▼

You trust the claim and ship it

▼

It was never run — breaks in production, on your name

✓ With the rule

Agent runs the real path

▼

Pastes the actual output + the signal that proves it

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You see it work before you trust it

Drop it into your CLAUDE.md — global, or per project. It costs the agent a few seconds per change and saves you the half-day of unwinding a fix that never ran. Where it earns the most is the second time you hear "still broken": that sentence means the first diagnosis was wrong, not under-applied — so the rule makes the agent re-diagnose from the observed output instead of re-patching the same guess.

Paste into CLAUDE.md

## Verification — before reporting "done"
Never report a change as done on inspection alone. First:
1. Run the real path — render the page / hit the endpoint / execute the command.
2. Paste the actual output here. Do not describe it; show it.
3. State the one observable signal that proves it works (a value, an exit code, a rendered element).
A confident tone is not evidence. If the user says "still broken," re-diagnose from the observed output — do not re-apply the same fix on a new guess.

Prefer your agent install it?

Add this rule to my CLAUDE.md, verbatim:

## Verification — before reporting "done"
Never report a change as done on inspection alone. First:
1. Run the real path — render the page / hit the endpoint / execute the command.
2. Paste the actual output here. Do not describe it; show it.
3. State the one observable signal that proves it works (a value, an exit code, a rendered element).
A confident tone is not evidence. If the user says "still broken," re-diagnose from the observed output — do not re-apply the same fix on a new guess.