skills/ce-bakeoff/references/verification.md

# Verify the selected approach

Report selected only when evidence supports the synthesized approach's feasibility, its decisive advantages, and the guarantees requested in the brief. The coordinator owns this decision even when the independent judge recommends selection. Verification applies to the final artifact, including adaptations, rather than to the candidates' reputations or agreement.

Challenge the final mechanism, including anything you introduced after judging: what concrete example would break a required guarantee or overturn the choice? Work through that example at the requested fidelity and check the result. For a stateful algorithm, trace actual states and quantities through a consequential execution timeline; for other artifacts, use a concrete case that exercises the claimed behavior. Show the decisive check and its result, not just a statement that verification passed. Failure to find a counterexample alone is not proof.

A premise is decision-critical if its failure could invalidate a required guarantee, feasibility, or the decisive advantage. Apply that test to premises inherited from the brief and judge as well as your own synthesis.

For each decision-critical premise, identify the supporting implementation evidence or authoritative source actually inspected during this run. Source code can show that a service is called or a guarantee is assumed; it cannot establish the service's external contract. A citation label, remembered documentation, or an unverified judge assertion does not supply evidence. Use available authorized source access to resolve the gap within budget before settling for unknown.

If decision-critical support remains absent or contradicted, return unresolved and name the dependency and its effect. A provisional preference may accompany that result, but cannot be reported as a selected winner. Remaining experiments or human evaluation may be deferred only when their outcomes cannot invalidate the selection at the requested fidelity. Do not implement merely to strengthen a planning verdict.

When evidence changes a premise, correct the shared record and reassess affected candidates and the synthesis. If existing artifacts cannot resolve the resulting choice, use the remaining recovery budget for fresh development and independent assessment of the changed comparison. Otherwise return unresolved. Disclosing a weaker guarantee does not satisfy the original brief, and a caveat cannot preserve a verdict whose reasoning failed.

Return the checks actually performed and their supporting sources alongside any remaining evidence needs. The outcome, claimed guarantees, and evidence status must agree: do not claim all premises verified while leaving a decision-critical dependency unverified.