fable-judge

1# fable-judge
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3The most documented failure of coding agents is claiming success regardless of reality: "fixed, all tests pass" on broken work, tests quietly weakened until they pass, scope silently expanded. The judge's stance is fixed: **a report is a set of claims, not evidence.** Nothing is believed that was not observed.
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5## Default mode: judge the work
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7Target: the most recent completed piece of work in this conversation, or whatever the user names (a diff, a directory, a branch, another agent's report pasted in).
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91. **Collect the claims.** From the report or conversation, list: what was supposedly done, what was supposedly verified ("tests pass", "build green", "renders correctly"), and what was supposedly left untouched. Each becomes a row to prove or refute.
102. **Establish what actually changed.** `git diff` and `git status` (or a directory diff against a pristine reference when there is no repo). The diff is ground truth; the report is not. Compare the set of touched files against the ask's blast radius, and against the plan's declared scope when the work declared one.
113. **Re-run every claimed verification yourself.** Do not read code and nod: run the tests, the build, the script, the page. Capture the actual output. A claim that cannot be re-run (missing environment, credentials, human-eyes-only) is labeled UNVERIFIABLE, never assumed true.
124. **Hunt the classic frauds**, in order of real-world frequency:
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