verify-commands

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Translated

Apply whenever you write or review a command that decides whether work is done: a test invocation, an acceptance check, a CI gate, a shell assertion, a grep-based verify step. Names the failure signal, grounds paths, and catches the shapes that pass green while measuring nothing.

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Sourcemdsmithaustin/pstack

Added on2026-09-05

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add mdsmithaustin/pstack verify-commands

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Verify commands

A verify command is an acceptance test. Before shipping one, answer: if this command were silently doing nothing, what in its output would tell me? If you cannot answer, you have a command, not a check. Fix the command; do not invent a statement for it.

Name the failing direction

Next to every runnable check, write one line naming the observable signal that means failure:

non-zero exit

,

"0 passed" in the summary line

,

the coverage line is absent

,

stderr contains "ECONNREFUSED"

. "The command fails" and "an error occurs" are restatements, not signals.

TBD

,

N/A

, and

none

are refusals. Short is fine;

non-zero exit

is complete. Prefer the signal the tool actually emits over one you imagine: for a command that already ran, state what you saw; for a new one, take the signal from the tool's documented output. N commands need N statements.

Ground every path

Inherit the command that already worked in this repo, verbatim, before deriving a new one. A

cd

target or

--prefix

target must exist, or be created by an earlier step, and must hold the matching manifest (

package.json

,

Makefile

,

pyproject.toml

). Prefer

npm --prefix <dir> run <script>

over

cd <dir> && npm run <script>

; it does not depend on the caller's working directory. Do not hand-reason the filesystem: list it. If you cannot ground a path, say so instead of guessing.

Shapes that pass while measuring nothing

Trap	Why it passes	Instead
`pnpm ls vite \| grep -E '^vite@7'`	tree output starts each line with `└──` , so `^` never matches	drop the anchor, or match `(└\|├)── vite@7`
`npm test \| grep '714 passed'`	a count recalled from memory, stale from training	`grep -E '[0-9]+ passed'` , or run the count first
`X=$(cmd 2>/dev/null \|\| echo 0)` feeding `[ "$X" = "$Y" ]`	both sides default to `0` when inputs are missing, so parity passes on nothing	let the failure propagate, or guard with `test -f` and exit
`grep -c 'LITERAL' file == 0` while an instruction or comment quotes `LITERAL`	the gate trips on comment text, not on code	describe the forbidden thing by concept, not by literal
`! grep -q PATTERN file` when a sibling change legitimately adds `PATTERN` elsewhere in the file	a file-wide negative is unsatisfiable across regions	scope it: `awk '/^def f/,/^def /' file \| grep` , or an AST check, or a unit test
a test-name filter that matches zero tests	exit 0 with nothing asserted	list tests first ( `--collect-only` , `--list` ), then run the one named test

The anchor trap has a family:

npm ls

,

yarn list

,

docker ps

, and

kubectl get

all print column or tree prefixes.

|| echo default

is acceptable only when absence is the default and the value is not used in a comparison meant to detect absence.

Reviewing someone else's command

Report; never prescribe a replacement path you did not verify. A prescribed path is copied verbatim and carries zero information. A missing directory or manifest is a blocker: quote the raw target. A dynamic path, glob,

, or variable is a warning, not a licence to guess the literal.