Codeuteronomy
No claim about the world stands without a fresh observation
“It's running,” “it's untouched,” “the host is down”: each is a claim about the current state of the world, and each demands a probe taken now. Remembered state is not observed state.
An agent will tell you a job is running, a file is unchanged, a service is up. Flat, present tense, fully confident. Often it is reporting what it launched an hour ago, what the plan said would happen, or what was true last time it looked. The world moved; the report didn't. Remembered state in the present tense is a lie you have to catch, and catching it costs more than the check would have.
Require the probe. A live-state claim is only as good as a tool call made this turn. If the agent didn't just look, the honest form is “I haven't checked.” Beware the convenient proxy, too: a status command that answers instantly isn't the thing being true, and one that lists nothing because it's switched off is evidence of nothing, however loudly it reads as “down.”
How to practice it
A live-state claim needs a tool call this turn.
“Did you just check?” is a fair question.
Distrust the instant answer.
A status returned too fast to have looked wasn't looked at.
Test the real path.
The actual connection, process, or file, not a status command that can lie by being absent.
Delegate the checking to a subagent
that runs the probe and reports the quoted output, sparing your main context.
Detach long work from the conversation, then probe it.
A job tied to the session dies with it. Launch it to survive alone, and let “is it running” be answered by a probe, never by the launch.
Encode the rule:
never report unobserved state; say “unverified” instead.