dos-witness-claim - fold witnessed effects, not narration

A worker result is a claim, not a fact. Before using it as input to another prompt, report, plan, or commit, witness the claimed effect from a surface the worker did not author. Fold only confirmed effects; route unconfirmed results separately and count them in the denominator.

Load-Bearing Rule

Never interpolate a worker's return string directly into a synthesis as ground truth. Extract the checkable effect, gather a non-agent-authored witness, and fold only the confirmed bucket.

Step 0 - Discover The Workspace

dos doctor --workspace . --json

Read paths, lanes, and stamp from the result. If a claim names a (plan, phase), dos verify applies this workspace's stamp grammar; do not grep commit subjects yourself.

Step 1 - Check Worker Terminal State

If you have a worker transcript path, verify the result is not a harness-authored death before reading it as a worker result:

dos verify-result --workspace . --transcript <agent-transcript.jsonl>

Route by exit code:

• 0: terminal result is usable for claim extraction; still witness the effect.
• 3: worker is dead or synthetic. Do not fold its return string; re-dispatch or surface the failed unit.
• 2: contract error. Fix the transcript wiring; do not treat it as healthy.

If verify-result is not available in the installed DOS version, log the gap and continue to effect witnessing. The gap is not a pass.

Step 2 - Extract The Checkable Claim

Classify each result into one of these claim types:

Claim type	Example	Witness
Git phase	"PLAN / PHASE shipped"	dos verify over git ancestry and stamp grammar
Commit claim	"commit <sha> did X"	dos commit-audit <sha>
File/effect claim	"created file X", "sent id Y"	fresh read-back, OS exit code, API GET, or state diff
No checkable claim	"done", "looks good"	no fold; surface as NO_CLAIM

Abstain rather than inventing identifiers from prose. A result without a named effect is not confirmed.

Step 3 - Witness Git-Backed Claims

For a (plan, phase) claim:

dos verify --workspace . <PLAN> <PHASE> --json

Fold only when the exit code is shipped and the JSON carries a positive source such as registry or grep-subject. Preserve the source rung in the synthesis; grep-subject is weaker than a registry row.

For a commit claim:

dos commit-audit --workspace . <sha>

Treat OK / diff-witnessed as foldable shape evidence. Treat CLAIM_UNWITNESSED as residual review work, not as success.

Step 4 - Witness Non-Git Effects

There is no generic dos verify-effect CLI verb. For created files, DB rows, messages, deploys, or external side effects, gather a fresh read-back from a surface the worker did not author:

• file claim: fresh filesystem read/stat of the exact path;
• API claim: GET the object by id;
• DB claim: read the row by key;
• command claim: run the relevant command and check its exit/status output.

If the read-back confirms the effect, fold it as CONFIRMED. If it contradicts the claim, route it as REFUTED. If no accountable read-back exists, route it as UNWITNESSED; never fold it as success.

Step 5 - Return A Partition, Not A Story

Return results in four buckets:

• CONFIRMED: safe to fold into the next prompt or report.
• REFUTED / NOT_SHIPPED / DEAD: do not fold; re-dispatch or surface.
• UNWITNESSED: do not fold; identify the missing witness.
• NO_CLAIM: do not fold; ask for a checkable effect if needed.

Carry coverage forward:

confirmed M of N declared results; refuted R; unwitnessed U; no-claim C

Downstream synthesis must see the coverage. Do not let 4/7 confirmed become 7/7 returned.

Anti-Patterns

• Folding ${result} directly because it is non-empty.
• Asking a model whether a worker's own output looks complete.
• Counting only returned strings in the denominator.
• Treating UNWITNESSED or NO_CLAIM as probably successful.
• Grepping commit subjects yourself instead of calling dos verify.