| name | check-freshness |
| description | Partial Skill: invoke by name only — the ACED eval-result freshness check — decides whether a recorded result still describes the configuration on disk, not user-triggered. |
| user-invocable | false |
| metadata | {"internal":true} |
check-freshness
The freshness check — the deterministic engine that reads the newest eval result run recorded
for a target, re-hashes the paths that result recorded, and returns one of four verdicts. It is
read-only: it never writes, repairs, or deletes a result.
It answers the question from the record itself. run records the inputs it reports consuming and
their hashes; this re-hashes those same paths in the working tree and compares. Nothing is inferred:
no modification times, no guessed file sets, no guessed directory names.
Invocation
node "<skill>/scripts/check-freshness.mts" --node <node-dir>
<node-dir> holds the node's eval.md (whose subject: names the target) and its frozen
.feature. Exit status is zero only for current; every other verdict, and every fail-closed
path, exits non-zero.
It also exposes the hashing routine, so run records entries with the same implementation that
reads them back — never a second one that merely agrees today:
node "<skill>/scripts/check-freshness.mts" --hash-file <path>
node "<skill>/scripts/check-freshness.mts" --hash-dir <path>
The four verdicts
| Verdict | Means |
|---|
current | Every input the run recorded still hashes as recorded. |
stale | At least one recorded subject input changed, is gone, or (a directory) now lists different entries — no individual score can be relied on without re-running. |
incomplete | Every subject input matches, but the recorded frozen suite changed — the scores survive, the suite grew past them. |
absent | There is nothing to compare: no results directory, no result for this target, none readable, no evaluated set, or an evaluated set that contradicts the record carrying it. |
A node with no eval.md, or an eval.md with no subject: key, fails closed and emits no
verdict — a guard that cannot decide must not manufacture one, and absent would read as
"checked, nothing recorded".
Two boundaries, both deliberate
Closed world. It compares the inputs the result recorded and nothing else; it never re-resolves
what the subject depends on now. So current means "every input this result recorded still hashes
as recorded", never "the subject has not grown". Growth is caught at the producer — run records a
hash over the entry names of every directory it listed. Growth reaching the subject by a path run
never consumed stays invisible by construction: it was not an input, so the result stays truthful
about what it measured.
Trust boundary. evaluated is what the run reports consuming, not a verified trace. An
under-reporting run records a shorter set whose entries all match, and this answers current with
full confidence — a silent failure pointing the unsafe way (#475). What is checkable is
coherence: a set omitting the .feature whose scenarios the record scores, or the configuration
its own target names, contradicts the record it accompanies and reads absent. That catches only
an inconsistent under-reporter; a uniform one escapes.
Reading current as "the run's account still holds" is sound. Reading it as "the run read everything
it should have" is not, and this engine never claims the second.
Boundaries
Scores nothing (run), compares no two versions (compare), rolls nothing up (report), and does
not judge whether a recorded pass was well-founded (a judge-protocol question, #477). It decides
a verdict and reports it; what a caller does with that verdict is the caller's — wiring run and
improve to consult it is #476.
Spec: .agents/specs/aced/eval-run/check-freshness/.
