forge-checker-handoff

name	forge-checker-handoff
description	Governs the checker-handoff gate for FORGE verdicts that authorize an irreversible action. Use at the end of the Emit phase, after the verdict and recommended action are drafted, to check the recommended action against the five mechanically observable irreversibility trigger markers (deploy/release, destructive migration or data deletion, security-boundary change, external spend/commitment, public communication). On a match, set the emitted reasoning-report's requires_checker flag to true instead of letting the verdict flow straight to execution. Reversible verdicts (no marker match) are unaffected — do not fire this skill for them.
metadata	{"methodology":"FORGE","phase":"E"}

Checker-Handoff Skill — FORGE (maker ≠ checker, additive)

Loaded at the tail of the Emit phase, after the verdict and its recommended action are drafted but before the envelope is finalized. FORGE's own Gate (skills/verification.md) is a self-review pass — sound for most verdicts, but not sufficient authority to greenlight an action that cannot be undone. This skill is the mechanical trigger that routes those verdicts to a distinct checker before any action is taken.

When to use

Load this skill once per deliberation, at Emit, immediately after the winning hypothesis's recommended action is known. Check the recommended action against the trigger table below. Fire the hop only on a match. Do not use for verdicts whose recommended action is reversible at ordinary cost — those emit exactly as before, with requires_checker: false (the default).

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Irreversibility trigger table

Five categories, checked mechanically against the recommended action's text — a match on any category fires the hop:

#	Category	Observable markers in the recommended action
1	Deploy / release	deploy, release, ship to production, go live, roll out, promote to prod
2	Destructive migration or data deletion	drop table, truncate, delete from, irreversible migration, purge data, destroy backup
3	Security-boundary change	change permissions, rotate credentials, modify IAM/ACL, disable auth, open firewall, grant/revoke access
4	External spend / commitment	sign contract, purchase, commit budget, vendor agreement, procurement, SLA commitment
5	Public communication	press release, public announcement, customer-facing communication, publish blog post, public API contract change

These five categories are the closed trigger set for this skill — do not extend them ad hoc. If a recommended action is genuinely irreversible but does not fit any of the five, the standard Reversibility dimension in skills/framing.md Step 4 and the verdict's [RISK] markers already carry that signal; this skill only formalizes the mechanically-observable subset.

Your hop

1. Detect — After drafting the recommended action, scan it against the trigger table above. Zero matches → skip to step 4 (no hop).
2. Mark — On a match, set requires_checker: true in the emitted reasoning-report's frontmatter (schemas/reasoning-report-profile.v1.json requires_checker field). Add a [CHECKER-REQUIRED] line to the verdict's Provenance section naming the fired category and a checker-class hint: VIGIL for evidence-based/technical claims (root-cause, feasibility, reproducibility — claims a second reasoning or investigation pass can adjudicate), human for judgment calls (organizational, strategic, or policy trade-offs no evidence pass resolves). The hint is guidance, not a dispatch — see Invariants below.
3. Emit unchanged otherwise — The hop does not add a reasoning pass, does not trigger REFORGE, and does not block emission. FORGE still emits its normal verdict on the normal 1–3 pass / 1-REFORGE budget; requires_checker is a payload marker, not a refusal.
4. Default — Absent a trigger match, requires_checker is false (the schema default). Reversible verdicts are byte-for-byte unaffected by this skill's existence.

Invariants

• maker(forge) ≠ checker(vigil/human). FORGE's own Gate is necessary but not sufficient authority for an irreversible action. A requires_checker: true report MUST be reviewed by a distinct party before any action — FORGE never self-certifies past this line.
• Tool-less, always. FORGE holds no tools (P0-1) and does not gain any at this hop. The hop is expressed purely via the emitted-artifact marker (requires_checker: true + the [CHECKER-REQUIRED] note) — never a tool call, never a direct dispatch to VIGIL or a human. Routing between VIGIL and human is the orchestrator's decision, informed by but not bound to FORGE's checker-class hint.
• Additive, never blocking. This hop composes with — does not extend — the existing 3-pass / 1-REFORGE cap and does not gate emission. A verdict that fails to emit because of this skill is a bug in this skill, not correct behavior.
• Backward compatible. Orchestrators that do not read requires_checker see no change in behavior — the field defaults to false and the rest of the reasoning-report is unchanged.

Graceful skip

If the recommended action's text is ambiguous or the decision type makes the five categories inapplicable (e.g. a pure ROOT-CAUSE verdict with no recommended action beyond "investigate further"), requires_checker stays false. This skill never fabricates an irreversibility claim to be safe — false positives erode the signal as much as false negatives.

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Reasoner — Checker-Handoff Skill (maker ≠ checker, additive)