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Skill

verification-before-completion

by obra

AI Summary

This booster enforces a disciplined verification workflow that prevents false success claims by requiring developers to run and confirm verification commands before marking work complete. It's essential for any development team wanting to eliminate premature PRs and false positives.

Install

# Install skill into your project
mkdir -p .cursor/skills/verification-before-completion
&& curl --retry 3 --retry-delay 2 --retry-all-errors -o .cursor/skills/verification-before-completion/SKILL.md "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/obra/superpowers/main/skills/verification-before-completion/SKILL.md"

Run in your IDE terminal (bash). On Windows, use Git Bash, WSL, or your IDE's built-in terminal. If curl fails with an SSL error, your network may block raw.githubusercontent.com — try using a VPN or download the files directly from the source repo.

Description

Use when about to claim work is complete, fixed, or passing, before committing or creating PRs - requires running verification commands and confirming output before making any success claims; evidence before assertions always

Overview

Claiming work is complete without verification is dishonesty, not efficiency. Core principle: Evidence before claims, always. Violating the letter of this rule is violating the spirit of this rule.

The Iron Law

` NO COMPLETION CLAIMS WITHOUT FRESH VERIFICATION EVIDENCE ` If you haven't run the verification command in this message, you cannot claim it passes.

The Gate Function

` BEFORE claiming any status or expressing satisfaction: • IDENTIFY: What command proves this claim? • RUN: Execute the FULL command (fresh, complete) • READ: Full output, check exit code, count failures • VERIFY: Does output confirm the claim? • If NO: State actual status with evidence • If YES: State claim WITH evidence • ONLY THEN: Make the claim Skip any step = lying, not verifying `

Common Failures

| Claim | Requires | Not Sufficient | |-------|----------|----------------| | Tests pass | Test command output: 0 failures | Previous run, "should pass" | | Linter clean | Linter output: 0 errors | Partial check, extrapolation | | Build succeeds | Build command: exit 0 | Linter passing, logs look good | | Bug fixed | Test original symptom: passes | Code changed, assumed fixed | | Regression test works | Red-green cycle verified | Test passes once | | Agent completed | VCS diff shows changes | Agent reports "success" | | Requirements met | Line-by-line checklist | Tests passing |

Quality Score

B

Good

75/100

Standard Compliance45
Documentation Quality72
Usefulness78
Maintenance Signal100
Community Signal100
Scored 4d ago

GitHub Signals

Stars84.2k
Forks6.6k
Issues146
Updated3d ago
View on GitHub

Trust & Transparency

Open Source — MIT

Source code publicly auditable

Verified Open Source

Hosted on GitHub — publicly auditable

Actively Maintained

Last commit 3d ago

84.2k stars — Strong Community

6.6k forks

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Community Rating

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Works With

Claude Code