Determinism

Turn a repeated judgment into an executable contract.

Procedure

1. Name the exact input, expected invariant, and authoritative readback.
2. Use the simplest deterministic mechanism: parser, schema, fixture, checksum, query, or narrow test.
3. Return a meaningful exit status: 0 for satisfied, nonzero for a specific failure class.
4. Keep diagnostics compact and stable enough for another script or agent to consume.
5. Version prompts or generated contracts when their semantics affect the result; record a hash when drift must be detected.
6. Prove both a passing case and a deliberately failing case.

Boundary

• determinism designs the assertion or integrity mechanism.
• verify selects and runs the repository's declared gates.
• testing skills construct broader behavioral test suites.

References

• references/code-verification.md — executable assertion patterns.
• references/prompt-versioning.md — semantic versions and hashes for prompt contracts.