kata-verify-work

name	kata-verify-work
description	Validate built features through conversational testing, running UAT, user acceptance testing, checking if features work, or verifying implementation. Triggers include "verify work", "test features", "UAT", "user testing", "check if it works", and "validate features". Use when this capability is needed.
metadata	{"author":"gannonh"}

Validate built features through conversational testing with persistent state.

Purpose: Confirm what Claude built actually works from user's perspective. One test at a time, plain text responses, no interrogation. When issues are found, automatically diagnose, plan fixes, and prepare for execution.

Output: {phase}-UAT.md tracking all test results. If issues found: diagnosed gaps, verified fix plans ready for /kata-execute-phase

<execution_context> @./references/verify-work.md </execution_context>

Phase: $ARGUMENTS (optional) - If provided: Test specific phase (e.g., "4") - If not provided: Check for active sessions or prompt for phase

@.planning/STATE.md @.planning/ROADMAP.md

<pre_flight> Run validation checks before starting verification:

# Validate config and template overrides
node scripts/kata-lib.cjs check-config 2>/dev/null || true
node scripts/kata-lib.cjs check-template-drift 2>/dev/null || true

If warnings are printed, relay them to the user before proceeding with verification. </pre_flight>

0. Resolve UAT template (project override -> plugin default):

UAT_TEMPLATE_PATH=$(node scripts/kata-lib.cjs resolve-template "UAT-template.md")
UAT_TEMPLATE_CONTENT=$(cat "$UAT_TEMPLATE_PATH")

Use UAT_TEMPLATE_CONTENT as the format specification when creating or updating UAT.md files.

1. Check for active UAT sessions (resume or start new)
2. Find SUMMARY.md files for the phase
3. Extract testable deliverables (user-observable outcomes)
4. Create {phase}-UAT.md with test list
5. Present tests one at a time:
   • Show expected behavior
   • Wait for plain text response
   • "yes/y/next" = pass, anything else = issue (severity inferred)
6. Update UAT.md after each response
7. On completion: commit UAT.md 7.1. Run extra verification commands (if configured in workflows.verify-work) 7.5. Finalize changes (pr_workflow only) — commit fixes, push, mark PR ready 7.6. Run PR review (pr_workflow only, optional) — offer automated review 7.7. Handle review findings — fix issues or add to backlog
8. If issues found:
   • Spawn parallel debug agents to diagnose root causes
   • Spawn kata-planner in --gaps mode to create fix plans
   • Spawn kata-plan-checker to verify fix plans
   • Iterate planner ↔ checker until plans pass (max 3)
   • Present ready status with /clear then /kata-execute-phase

<step_7_5_pr_workflow>

7.5. Finalize Changes (pr_workflow only)

Read pr_workflow config:

PR_WORKFLOW=$(node scripts/kata-lib.cjs read-config "pr_workflow" "false")
WORKTREE_ENABLED=$(node scripts/kata-lib.cjs read-config "worktree.enabled" "false")

If PR_WORKFLOW=false: Skip to offer_next.

If PR_WORKFLOW=true:

1. Check for uncommitted changes:

   git status --porcelain
   

2. If changes exist, stage and commit them:

   git add -u
   git commit -m "fix({phase}): UAT fixes"
   

3. Push to branch:

   BRANCH=$(git branch --show-current)
   git push origin "$BRANCH"
   

4. Check if PR exists:

   PR_NUMBER=$(gh pr list --head "$BRANCH" --json number --jq '.[0].number' 2>/dev/null)
   

5. If PR exists, mark ready (if still draft):

   gh pr ready "$PR_NUMBER" 2>/dev/null || true
   PR_URL=$(gh pr view --json url --jq '.url')
   

Store PR_NUMBER and PR_URL for offer_next. </step_7_5_pr_workflow>

<step_7_6_pr_review>

7.6. Run PR Review (pr_workflow only, optional)

After marking PR ready, offer to run automated review:

Use AskUserQuestion:

• header: "PR Review"
• question: "Run automated PR review before team review?"
• options:
  • "Yes, run full review" — Run kata-review-pull-requests with all aspects
  • "Quick review (code only)" — Run kata-review-pull-requests with "code" aspect only
  • "Skip" — Proceed without review

If user chooses review:

1. Invoke skill: Skill("kata-review-pull-requests", "<aspect>")
2. Display review summary with counts: {N} critical, {M} important, {P} suggestions
3. STOP and ask what to do with findings (see step 7.7)

If user chooses "Skip": Continue to offer_next without review. </step_7_6_pr_review>

<step_7_7_handle_findings>

7.7. Handle Review Findings (required after review completes)

STOP here. Do not proceed to offer_next until user chooses an action.

Use AskUserQuestion with options based on what was found:

• header: "Review Findings"
• question: "How do you want to handle the review findings?"
• options (show only applicable ones):
  • "Fix critical issues" — (if critical > 0) Fix critical, then offer to add remaining to backlog
  • "Fix critical & important" — (if critical + important > 0) Fix both, then offer to add suggestions to backlog
  • "Fix all issues" — (if any issues) Fix everything
  • "Add to backlog" — Create issues for all findings without fixing
  • "Ignore and continue" — Skip all issues

After user chooses:

Path A: "Fix critical issues"

1. Fix each critical issue
2. If important or suggestions remain, ask: "Add remaining {N} issues to backlog?"
   • "Yes" → Create issues, store TODOS_CREATED count
   • "No" → Continue
3. Commit and push fixes
4. Continue to offer_next

Path B: "Fix critical & important"

1. Fix each critical and important issue
2. If suggestions remain, ask: "Add {N} suggestions to backlog?"
   • "Yes" → Create issues, store TODOS_CREATED count
   • "No" → Continue
3. Commit and push fixes
4. Continue to offer_next

Path C: "Fix all issues"

1. Fix all critical, important, and suggestion issues
2. Commit and push fixes
3. Continue to offer_next

Path D: "Add to backlog"

1. Create issues for all findings using /kata-add-issue
2. Store TODOS_CREATED count
3. Continue to offer_next

Path E: "Ignore and continue"

1. Continue to offer_next

Store REVIEW_SUMMARY and TODOS_CREATED for offer_next output. </step_7_7_handle_findings>

<anti_patterns>

• Don't use AskUserQuestion for test responses — plain text conversation
• Don't ask severity — infer from description
• Don't present full checklist upfront — one test at a time
• Don't run automated tests — this is manual user validation
• Don't fix issues during testing — log as gaps, diagnose after all tests complete </anti_patterns>

<offer_next> Output this markdown directly (not as a code block). Route based on UAT results:

Status	Route
All tests pass + more phases	Route A (next phase)
All tests pass + last phase	Route B (milestone complete)
Issues found + fix plans ready	Route C (execute fixes)
Issues found + planning blocked	Route D (manual intervention)

---

Route A: All tests pass, more phases remain

Step 1: If PR_WORKFLOW=true, STOP and ask about merge BEFORE showing completion output.

Use AskUserQuestion:

• header: "PR Ready for Merge"
• question: "PR #{pr_number} is ready. Merge before continuing to next phase?"
• options:
  • "Yes, merge now" — merge PR, then show completion
  • "No, continue without merging" — show completion with PR status

Step 2: Handle merge response (if PR_WORKFLOW=true)

If user chose "Yes, merge now":

gh pr merge "$PR_NUMBER" --merge

Then update local state:

if [ "$WORKTREE_ENABLED" = "true" ]; then
  # Bare repo layout: update main/ worktree, reset workspace/ to workspace-base
  git -C main pull
  bash "scripts/manage-worktree.sh" cleanup-phase workspace "$PHASE_BRANCH"
else
  git checkout main && git pull
fi

Set MERGED=true for output below.

Step 3: Show completion output

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Kata ► PHASE {Z} VERIFIED ✓ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Phase {Z}: {Name}

{N}/{N} tests passed UAT complete ✓ {If PR_WORKFLOW and MERGED: PR: #{pr_number} — merged ✓} {If PR_WORKFLOW and not MERGED: PR: #{pr_number} ({pr_url}) — ready for review} {If REVIEW_SUMMARY: PR Review: {summary_stats}} {If TODOS_CREATED: Backlog: {N} issues created from review suggestions}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

▶ Next Up

Phase {Z+1}: {Name} — {Goal from ROADMAP.md}

/kata-plan-phase {Z+1} — plan next phase

_{/clear first → fresh context window}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Also available:

• /kata-discuss-phase {Z+1} — gather context and clarify approach
• /kata-execute-phase {Z+1} — skip to execution (if already planned) {If PR_WORKFLOW and not MERGED: - gh pr view --web — review PR in browser before next phase}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

---

Route B: All tests pass, milestone complete

Step 1: If PR_WORKFLOW=true, STOP and ask about merge BEFORE showing completion output.

Use AskUserQuestion:

• header: "PR Ready for Merge"
• question: "PR #{pr_number} is ready. Merge before completing milestone?"
• options:
  • "Yes, merge now" — merge PR, then show completion
  • "No, continue without merging" — show completion with PR status

Step 2: Handle merge response (if PR_WORKFLOW=true)

If user chose "Yes, merge now":

gh pr merge "$PR_NUMBER" --merge

Then update local state:

if [ "$WORKTREE_ENABLED" = "true" ]; then
  # Bare repo layout: update main/ worktree, reset workspace/ to workspace-base
  git -C main pull
  bash "scripts/manage-worktree.sh" cleanup-phase workspace "$PHASE_BRANCH"
else
  git checkout main && git pull
fi

Set MERGED=true for output below.

Step 3: Show completion output

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Kata ► PHASE {Z} VERIFIED ✓ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Phase {Z}: {Name}

{N}/{N} tests passed Final phase verified ✓ {If PR_WORKFLOW and MERGED: PR: #{pr_number} — merged ✓} {If PR_WORKFLOW and not MERGED: PR: #{pr_number} ({pr_url}) — ready for review} {If REVIEW_SUMMARY: PR Review: {summary_stats}} {If TODOS_CREATED: Backlog: {N} issues created from review suggestions}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

▶ Next Up

Audit milestone — verify requirements, cross-phase integration, E2E flows

/kata-audit-milestone

_{/clear first → fresh context window}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Also available:

• /kata-complete-milestone — skip audit, archive directly {If PR_WORKFLOW and not MERGED: - gh pr view --web — review PR in browser before audit}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

---

Route C: Issues found, fix plans ready

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Kata ► PHASE {Z} ISSUES FOUND ⚠ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Phase {Z}: {Name}

{N}/{M} tests passed {X} issues diagnosed Fix plans verified ✓

Issues Found

{List issues with severity from UAT.md}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

▶ Next Up

Execute fix plans — run diagnosed fixes

/kata-execute-phase {Z} --gaps-only

_{/clear first → fresh context window}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Also available:

• cat ${PHASE_DIR}/*-PLAN.md — review fix plans
• /kata-plan-phase {Z} --gaps — regenerate fix plans

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

---

Route D: Issues found, planning blocked

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Kata ► PHASE {Z} BLOCKED ✗ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Phase {Z}: {Name}

{N}/{M} tests passed Fix planning blocked after {X} iterations

Unresolved Issues

{List blocking issues from planner/checker output}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

▶ Next Up

Manual intervention required

Review the issues above and either:

1. Provide guidance for fix planning
2. Manually address blockers
3. Accept current state and continue

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Options:

• /kata-plan-phase {Z} --gaps — retry fix planning with guidance
• /kata-discuss-phase {Z} — gather more context before replanning

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── </offer_next>

<success_criteria>

• UAT.md created with tests from SUMMARY.md
• Tests presented one at a time with expected behavior
• Plain text responses (no structured forms)
• Severity inferred, never asked
• Batched writes: on issue, every 5 passes, or completion
• Committed on completion
• If issues: parallel debug agents diagnose root causes
• If issues: kata-planner creates fix plans from diagnosed gaps
• If issues: kata-plan-checker verifies fix plans (max 3 iterations)
• Ready for /kata-execute-phase when complete </success_criteria>

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