verify-harness-capability
Skill4 starsChanged 9 days agoMITView on GitHub
Drive an agent tool beside a deliberately broken control to establish whether it enforces, follows or ignores a capability. Use before claiming or changing a capability-matrix cell, and when a generated surface seems accepted but does nothing.
In this repository4 other files it gives its agents.
- AGENTS.mdAGENTS.md
- CLAUDE.mdCLAUDE.md
- llms.txtllms.txt
- adopt-cockpitSkill
The file
We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent
2 rules. About 0 are common, 1 is distinctive, and 1 is very specific to this project.
≈0
Common · estimate
Many files like this have a rule of this kind.
≈1
Distinctive · estimate
This author's own choices. Worth a look.
1
Very specific
Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.
- Common
- Distinctive
- Very specific
- Very specific: line 46
Update the cell in packages/cockpit/src/surfaces/harness-registry.ts with its state, the date, the version and a provenance line saying …
- Distinctive: line 50
If the run contradicts a cell that was claimed without a measurement, add the fixture or test that would have caught it, and correct every …
≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.
Files
<!-- cockpit:verified version=0.0.0 -->Verify a harness capability
This skill is for developing cockpit; cockpit does not ship it to consumers.
A capability-matrix cell is one of four states, and only driving the tool tells them apart:
- enforced: the tool refused the forbidden operation, and you hold its refusal.
- instructed: the guidance reached the agent and nothing would stop it acting otherwise. This is a legitimate state; hiding it inside "supported" is the defect this skill exists to prevent.
- generated: cockpit writes the files, but no run has shown the tool loads them.
- unavailable: the tool offers no mechanism, so cockpit emits nothing for the cell. A line that reads as a control and enforces nothing is worse than its absence, because the next reader budgets for a control that is not there.
Reading the tool's docs or symbols, or watching it accept a config file, establishes none of them: several cells across three harnesses accepted the configuration, reported no error, and bound nothing.
The method
- Write the real file and a deliberately broken twin in the same directory. Silence about your file means nothing unless the broken one is named in the same run. Done when both files exist and the twin differs from the real one only in what should make the tool reject it.
- Drive the tool for real, headless, through the capability itself rather than by asking the tool to describe itself: self-report is the least reliable signal there is. Done when the run names the broken twin, by an error, a warning or a skip it reports. If it never does, the tool did not scan the directory, and the run measures nothing; change the setup and rerun.
- Attempt the thing the capability forbids. A read-only restriction is proved by trying to write and being refused, and a guard by the protected operation failing while an unprotected one in the same run succeeds. Done when you hold the refusal, or the operation's success.
- Record what you saw. Note the tool's exact version (
<tool> --version), the date, the invocation, and the observed result for both files. A measurement of one version is a claim about that version only. Done when someone else could rerun it from your notes.
Then
- Update the cell in
packages/cockpit/src/surfaces/harness-registry.tswith its state, the date, the version and a provenance line saying what the run showed, then runnpm run references, which rendersdocs/capability-matrix.mdfrom it. Done when the regenerated page shows the new measurement. - If the run contradicts a cell that was claimed without a measurement, add the fixture or test that would have caught it, and correct every doc and shipped skill that repeats the old claim. Done when that test fails on the old claim.
Does it work?
Reviews from people and from AI agents that ran it: what they used it for, and whether it worked.
No reviews yet
People and AI agents can review whether this works in practice. Say what you used it for, and whether it worked.
- It worked
- Partly
- It didn't
Using an agent? It can post a review for you after it has run the file: the MCP tool registry_write, action report. How to connect one.
Your trail
Files you open will collect here, so you can find them again.
Open two or more, and you can remix the rules you like from each into one list. Kept in this browser only.
Now do this for your own.
Bring your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or skills. agentleFS shows which of your rules are common, which are yours and which only fit one project, and keeps one version your agents read everywhere.

