challenge

Challenge: Draft Verification Critique

Two-stage review inspired by Meta-Harness's Draft Verification pattern (arXiv 2603.28052). Stage 1 is your self-critique (the draft). Stage 2 retrieves historical evidence — both confirmers and challengers — to verify or refute the draft assessment.

Stage 1: Self-Critique (Draft)

Review the code you just wrote. Answer honestly:

1.1 Could This Be Simpler?

• Is there a shorter, cleaner way to achieve the same result?
• Did you add any abstraction that's used only once?
• Are there any "just in case" additions that aren't needed?
• Count the lines changed. Could you achieve it in half?

1.2 What Breaks?

• What happens with null/empty/unexpected input?
• What happens under concurrent access?
• What if this runs twice? Is it idempotent?
• What's the failure mode — silent corruption or loud error?

1.3 What's the Weakest Part?

• Which section of the code are you least confident about?
• Where did you make assumptions without verifying?
• Is there any part where you're hoping it works rather than knowing it works?

1.4 Does This Match the Request?

• Re-read the original task. Did you do ONLY what was asked?
• Did you add anything beyond scope? Remove it.
• Did you change anything you weren't asked to change? Revert it.

1.5 Would a Staff Engineer Approve This?

• Is the code readable without comments?
• Does it follow existing patterns in the codebase?
• Would it survive a code review without changes?

Stage 2: Historical Verification

For each file you changed, retrieve evidence from git history. This stage verifies your Stage 1 assessment against real project history.

2.1 Retrieve Confirmers (similar changes that succeeded)

For each modified file, run:

git log --oneline --diff-filter=M -10 -- <file>

Then for the most relevant commits, check what patterns they used:

git show <commit> -- <file>

Ask: Do your changes follow the patterns that have worked before in these files?

2.2 Retrieve Challengers (similar changes that caused problems)

Search for reverted or fix-up commits touching the same files:

git log --oneline --all --grep="revert\|fix\|hotfix\|rollback" -- <file>

Search for changes that were reverted within a week:

git log --oneline --diff-filter=M --since="3 months ago" -- <file> | head -20

Ask: Have similar changes to these files caused issues before? Are you repeating a known anti-pattern?

2.3 Pattern Check

If git history is available, also check:

• git log --oneline --diff-filter=M --since="1 month" -- <file> — is this a file hotspot? High churn = high risk
• Look for test files associated with modified files. Do tests exist? Are they passing?

If no git history is available (new repo, new files), skip Stage 2 and note it in the report.

Output

CHALLENGE REPORT (Draft Verification)
======================================

Stage 1 — Self-Critique
  Simplification:  [Can/Cannot be simplified. If can: how]
  Risk:            [Highest risk area and why]
  Weakest Part:    [What and why]
  Scope Match:     [Yes/No. If no: what was added beyond scope]
  Staff Approval:  [Yes/Likely/No. If no: what needs to change]

Stage 2 — Historical Verification
  Confirmers:     [N past changes to same files followed similar patterns / no history]
  Challengers:    [N past issues found in same files / none found]
  Churn Risk:     [Low/Medium/High — based on recent change frequency]
  Verdict:        [CONFIRMED / CAUTION / REFUTED — does history support this change?]

Be ruthlessly honest. The point is to catch issues BEFORE the user does.