Oracle review — an independent referee, then an honest triage

Never launch a bare Oracle run. This skill is the driver; the mechanics and the full contract live in external-oracle-process.md. Read it before the first run in a project — it carries setup, flags, artifact layout, the payload cliff, and the failure modes that have actually cost runs.

Compose with /credible-claims (the brief before, the claim record after) and /deep-audit (exhaustive in-house coverage first, so the oracle is confirmation, not discovery).

1. Brief before launch (5 lines)

• Question — what must this review answer? (correctness audit? venue-referee simulation? confirm N named fixes cleared?)
• Scope — what is IN, and what is HELD (standing rulings; list them so triage can filter).
• Completion — what verdict or evidence ends this run.
• Required evidence — findings carry location + failing case, or they do not count.
• Escalation — which finding types come back to the user before any fix: estimand changes, assumption concessions, reporting-language downgrades.

2. Assign coverage — never let the referee sample

Maintain a statement inventory and a cross-round coverage ledger. Each round assigns what to audit and requires the referee to report what it actually verified, so union coverage reaches 100% instead of drifting toward whatever is easiest to read.

3. Launch

Mechanics, flags, and gotchas: the reference, §2–§3. Smoke-test first; check --files-report against the payload cliff; a run with no conversation URL never happened.

4. Triage — adjudicate, never ingest

Every finding is a CANDIDATE. Hand the batch to /adjudicate-review: judge each against the actual text, compute the computable first, filter the HELD list, and assign CONFIRMED / REFUTED / DOWNGRADED.

Oracle agreeing with your own reading is not independent confirmation — different models correlate on the same wrong answer.

5. Fix, converge, record

Batch every confirmed fix in one pass, re-verify, then run at most one confirmation round. Converged when a round returns no new CONFIRMED correctness defect — only held items and exposition taste. Close with a claim record: what was fixed (location + evidence), what was REFUTED and why, what is unresolved, and which decisions are the user's.

Cross-references

• external-oracle-process.md — the mechanics, and the five credibility questions the findings must be sorted into
• /adjudicate-review — the triage half
• /credible-claims — brief before, claim record after
• /deep-audit — in-house coverage first
• verification-ladder.md — rung 6; why the oracle comes last