/r-verify-claim

/rdf:r-verify-claim — Evidence Verification Skill

Verify a falsifiable claim about the current state of the codebase, a commit, or a file. Produces a structured triage report with probe commands, results, and a PASS/FAIL/UNVERIFIABLE verdict.

Operates as a skill the model invokes on itself to produce evidence, or a slash command the user types to sanity-check an asserted claim.

Invocation

/rdf:r-verify-claim "free-text claim"
/rdf:r-verify-claim --commit <sha> "claim"
/rdf:r-verify-claim --grep <pattern> <path>
/rdf:r-verify-claim --from-finding <sentinel-N.md>

Argument detection:

• --commit <sha> anchors the claim to a specific commit
• --grep <pattern> <path> is a shortcut for pattern-absent/present classes
• --from-finding <file> extracts claim text from a sentinel finding file
• Plain string → free-text claim, classifier decides the probe class

Claim Classifier

The classifier reads the claim text and assigns one of 5 closed-set classes. Each class has a pre-written probe template.

Class	Trigger phrases	Probe template
commit-landed	"phase N landed", "commit X", "merged", "pushed"	git log --oneline <range> | grep -i "{text}"
pattern-absent	"removed", "no longer", "cleaned up", "no "	grep -rn '{pattern}' {path} expect empty
pattern-present	"added", "exists", "all N ", "now contains"	grep -c '{pattern}' {path} expect ≥ threshold
file-unchanged	"unchanged", "not modified", "preserved"	git diff {ref} -- {path} expect 0 lines
behavior-observable	anything else	user-provided command required; else UNVERIFIABLE

If the claim does not map to a class, emit UNVERIFIABLE with guidance to rephrase or provide an explicit --grep / --commit anchor.

Output Format

Produce a structured markdown report:

## Claim Verification

**Claim:** <claim text>
**Class:** <class-name>

### Probes

| # | Command | Expected | Actual | Result |
|---|---------|----------|--------|--------|
| 1 | `<cmd>` | <expectation> | <actual> | PASS|FAIL |

**Verdict:** PASS | FAIL | UNVERIFIABLE — <one-line summary>

**Evidence line for result file:**
  - "<claim>": <citation>

**Suggested next action:** <only on FAIL or UNVERIFIABLE>

Examples

Pattern-absent claim:

$ /rdf:r-verify-claim "bare cp removed from lib/"

## Claim Verification
**Claim:** bare cp removed from lib/
**Class:** pattern-absent

### Probes
| # | Command | Expected | Actual | Result |
|---|---------|----------|--------|--------|
| 1 | `grep -rn '^\s*cp ' lib/` | no output | (empty) | PASS |

**Verdict:** PASS — claim holds as of HEAD.
**Evidence line:** - "bare cp removed from lib/": grep -rn '^\s*cp ' lib/ → (no output)

Commit-landed (failure):

$ /rdf:r-verify-claim "Phase 4 landed"

## Claim Verification
**Claim:** Phase 4 landed
**Class:** commit-landed

### Probes
| # | Command | Expected | Actual | Result |
|---|---------|----------|--------|--------|
| 1 | `git log --oneline origin/main..HEAD \| grep -i "phase 4"` | 1+ matches | (empty) | FAIL |

**Verdict:** FAIL — no commit matching "phase 4" found on HEAD.
**Suggested next action:** Either (a) the commit hasn't landed — re-check PLAN.md, or (b) the commit message doesn't contain "phase 4" — provide commit SHA with --commit <sha>.

Integration

Reviewer: Challenge Mode persona invokes this before asserting falsifiable MUST-FIX findings — see canonical/agents/reviewer.md §Challenge Mode §Verification protocol.

User: Type /rdf:r-verify-claim "…" to sanity-check any claim before acting on it.

Other agents: Engineer and QA may invoke this to produce the evidence lines for their result files.

Constraints

• Never write files. Never commit. Output is text only.
• Never invent commands the user didn't authorize — the classifier uses pre-written templates; behavior-observable requires the user to supply the command.
• Quote all path and pattern arguments when building commands to prevent shell-injection from claim text.
• If all probes for a class error out (tool failure, not claim falsification), emit UNVERIFIABLE with the error, not FAIL.