| name | claim-hygiene |
| description | Use before sending any message containing a file, a line number, a count, a severity, a commit hash, or a statement that X does Y. Also use before retracting one. |
Open the file, run the command, or delete the claim
Eleven assertions on 2026-08-22 were made without opening the file. The manager
noticed three of them.
PASTE NUMBERS FROM COMMAND OUTPUT. NEVER RETYPE THEM. The fleet count, the line
count, the commit count and a saved-lines estimate were all wrong that day, and
all four were retyped rather than pasted. One of them was in a commit whose
message said "every number comes from a command."
AN INTENTION IS NOT A FACT. A commit message, a ticket body or a handover note
saying someone is fixing something describes what they meant to do. A session was
told it was "mid-correction on #15" on that basis five minutes after it launched.
Attribute it or verify it.
MARK EVERY CLAIM MEASURED OR INFERRED, and hold yourself to it harder than you
hold the sessions. That split was demanded in twelve messages on the day a commit
message was relayed as fact.
IF IT WILL CHANGE WHAT ANOTHER SESSION BUILDS, either open the file and paste the
line, or send it labelled "read from outside, confirm or correct me". That second
form went out six times and came back confirmed or usefully sharpened six times.
It is not a weaker message, it is a cheaper one.
WHEN YOU RETRACT, RETRACT THE CLAIM ONLY. Do not invent reasons for the
retraction you have not checked. The pane-reading retraction was correct and gave
three reasons, two of which were themselves unverified -- one contradicted by a
command the manager had run twenty minutes earlier. A wrong reason attached to a
right retraction is a new unverified claim, and it is harder to catch because the
conclusion is sound.
VERIFICATION IS NOT SYMMETRIC IN YOUR FAVOUR. You cannot demand evidence you do
not supply. The thing that bought this fleet's trust was handing a worker the
argument against your own position before they found it.
