mitodl/agent-kit/verify-before-claiming

Verify before claiming

State changes while you work. What you saw earlier in this conversation, or what a summary or memory says, is not current state. These rules apply to every status claim, not only to code review.

1. Re-fetch status in the same turn you state it, and declare an environment or

fix done only after running the check that shows it works.

• PR: gh pr view <n> --json state,reviewDecision
• CI: gh pr checks <n>
• witan task: task_get(slug=...)
• Branch: git fetch && git log origin/<branch> -1

1. Never report an external event (a review landed, a check finished, someone

replied, a deploy completed) without the API call that shows it.

1. Before concluding work is missing or not started, run git status and

git worktree list. Uncommitted changes and other worktrees count.

1. Label each finding you report "verified (<command>)" or "inferred".

Anything you did not check is inferred, and you say so.

Shell commands and file edits

The shell may be bash, zsh or fish, and the tools GNU or BSD.

1. Anything beyond a single pipeline or && chain goes in a script file

outside the repo (the session scratchpad if your harness gives one, else mktemp -d), run with bash <file> or python3 <file>. No inline loops or multi-line heredoc logic in the interactive shell.

1. Don't depend on one shell's behavior in a one-liner. Quote every variable.

Don't assign to names zsh reserves (status, path). GNU and BSD tools differ (sed -i, date, grep -P), so do in-place edits of generated or data files in python, not sed -i.

1. Edit source files with your edit tool (Edit, apply_patch), never with

sed -i, a heredoc, or a python rewrite. After any scripted change to a file, read the result back.

1. Strip CR (tr -d '\r') from a file that may have CRLF line endings before

parsing it with awk, cut, read or a $-anchored grep.

1. ps | grep matches itself, and pgrep -f matches the shell wrapping your

command. In wait loops, save $! and poll kill -0 "$pid", or use a pidfile.

1. Commands handed to the user to paste use real values, never placeholders,

and say which shell they are for. Secrets go through an env var ("$GITHUB_TOKEN"), never pasted into the command.