feat(engine): VERIFY-COMMAND — the one command a stranger has instead of CI

The forge has no Actions runners, so this org publishes no CI badge; the
stated substitute is one command runnable from a clean clone. A repo with
something runnable and no such command in its README is a WARN — and the
finding names what the repo already has, so the remedy is one line.

The subject is MEASURED, never read off a class. Five of 21 clones have
nothing runnable at all and answer VERIFY-NONE at OK; they span plugin,
shared-asset AND standalone, so every class-level phrasing of this rule
would fail a correct repository somewhere. Measured: 10 document a
command, 6 do not, 5 have no subject.

Two things bound the rule. It adds no API call, so it has no SKIP at all
— copying the null-input guard from every check since PIN-DEAD would
print a false "not run". And it runs nothing, so its OK says documented,
never passing.

Not built, with distinct reasons recorded as invariants: RELEASE-ASSETS
is rejected permanently for having NO SUBJECT (0 of 21 READMEs mention an
asset download; the 18/18 fire rate is a proxy and must not be quoted as
the reason). TAG-SIGNED is BLOCKED ON AN OPERATOR DECISION, not rejected
— filing it with the rejections would read as settled when it is one
yes/no from acquiring its whole subject.

Also fixes this repo's own surface, which had drifted behind its engine:
four checks had shipped without a row in the README check table, and
Requirements still said "two network calls" after the third was added.

230 tests (from 213).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LwZeAZ8cHmGZofM9dryuT9

scripts/repo-standard-check.mjs

@@ -861,6 +861,86 @@ export function checkRemoteSync({ tags, forgeTagsSelf }) {
   }];
 }
 
+// The families a clean clone actually runs, read off the corpus rather than
+// imagined: npm/pnpm/yarn scripts, `node --test`, a named test file, pytest,
+// make, a shell test script, and the `--selftest` flag repo-mailbox ships.
+// `npm install` must NOT match — the install block is fenced in every repo in
+// the org, and matching it would hand a green line to every repo this check
+// exists to find.
+const VERIFY_COMMAND = new RegExp([
+  '(^|\\s)(npm|pnpm|yarn)\\s+(run\\s+\\S*test\\S*|test)\\b',
+  '(^|\\s)node\\s+--test\\b',
+  '\\.test\\.(mjs|cjs|js|ts)\\b',
+  '(^|\\s)(python3?\\s+-m\\s+)?pytest\\b',
+  '(^|\\s)make\\s+(test|check)\\b',
+  '--selftest\\b',
+  '(^|[\\s./])\\S*(test|selftest)\\S*\\.sh\\b',
+].join('|'));
+
+// The complement of `stripCode`, and deliberately derived FROM it: the link
+// checks need code removed, this one needs exactly what was removed. A second
+// hand-rolled fence parser is how two copies of one rule drift apart.
+export function codeLines(text) {
+  const src = String(text ?? '').split('\n');
+  const stripped = stripCode(text).split('\n');
+  return src.filter((line, i) => stripped[i] === ''
+    && line.trim() !== ''
+    && !/^\s*(```|~~~)/.test(line));
+}
+
+// There is no CI badge in this org because there is no CI — the published
+// substitute, stated in this repo's own README, is one command a stranger can
+// run from a clean clone. That SINGLE published stance is what licenses a check
+// that fires on a third of the org: VERSION-DRIFT was rejected because twelve
+// of the fifteen repos it felled were simply following the other legitimate
+// convention, and here there is no other convention. A repo with a runnable
+// suite and no documented command is not on a different plan; it is
+// undocumented.
+//
+// The subject is MEASURED, never read off a class. Across all 21 registered
+// clones (2026-08-12), 16 have something runnable and 5 do not —
+// human-friendly-style, llm-security-commons, playground-design-system,
+// portfolio-optimiser-commons and app-creator hold prose, output styles and
+// domain packs. Those five span the `plugin`, `shared-asset` and `standalone`
+// classes, so any class-level requirement would have failed a correct
+// repository somewhere. Nothing to verify is an OK, the RELEASE-NONE shape.
+//
+// What this check can NEVER do is report that a documented command works — it
+// runs nothing. It fells a missing command and nothing else, and the message
+// says so, because a green line implying a passing suite is a claim on the
+// surface that nobody verified. It also reads only the README and package.json,
+// so unlike every check since PIN-DEAD it has no null network input and
+// therefore no SKIP at all.
+export function checkVerifyCommand({ readme, testScript, testFileCount }) {
+  const count = Number(testFileCount ?? 0);
+  if (!testScript && count === 0) {
+    return [{
+      level: 'OK',
+      code: 'VERIFY-NONE',
+      msg: 'no test script and no tracked test file — nothing here a stranger could run, so no verification command is owed',
+    }];
+  }
+
+  const found = codeLines(readme).find((l) => VERIFY_COMMAND.test(l));
+  if (found) {
+    return [{
+      level: 'OK',
+      code: 'VERIFY-COMMAND',
+      msg: `README shows \`${found.trim()}\` — a stranger has one command to run. This gate does not run it, so this says documented, never passing.`,
+    }];
+  }
+
+  const have = testScript
+    ? `\`${testScript}\` is defined in package.json`
+    : `${count} tracked test file(s) exist`;
+  return [{
+    level: 'WARN',
+    code: 'VERIFY-MISSING',
+    bucket: 'missing',
+    msg: `${have}, but no README code block shows a command to run them — with no CI badge to fall back on, a stranger has no way to check this repo works. Show the command in a fenced block.`,
+  }];
+}
+
 // Counting badges needs a NARROWER rule than detecting a dishonest one. The
 // claim check reads any image, any host, on purpose. Here the opposite error
 // matters: counting a screenshot or an architecture diagram as clutter would
@@ -1298,7 +1378,7 @@ export function bucketsOf(findings) {
 }
 
 export function classifyRepo(
-  { name, files, present, description, pluginVersion, readmeBadge, changelogTop, tags, tagObjects, catalogNames, forgeTagsByRepo, forgeTagsSelf, releases },
+  { name, files, present, description, pluginVersion, readmeBadge, changelogTop, tags, tagObjects, catalogNames, forgeTagsByRepo, forgeTagsSelf, releases, testScript, testFileCount },
   register,
 ) {
   const klass = register.repos?.[name];
@@ -1339,6 +1419,7 @@ export function classifyRepo(
     ...checkTagIntegrity({ tagObjects, name }, register),
     ...checkReleaseCurrent({ forgeTagsSelf, releases }),
     ...checkRemoteSync({ tags, forgeTagsSelf }),
+    ...checkVerifyCommand({ readme, testScript, testFileCount }),
     ...checkDescription(description, register),
   ];
 
@@ -1505,6 +1586,41 @@ function readPackageVersion(dir) {
   return null;
 }
 
+// The declared way to run this repo's tests, if there is one. Only
+// package.json carries it — a plugin manifest has no scripts, and pyproject's
+// runner is not a command a stranger can copy.
+function readTestScript(dir) {
+  const full = join(dir, 'package.json');
+  if (!existsSync(full)) return null;
+  try {
+    const scripts = JSON.parse(readFileSync(full, 'utf8')).scripts ?? {};
+    return scripts.test ? String(scripts.test) : null;
+  } catch {
+    return null;
+  }
+}
+
+// Files that are unambiguously EXECUTABLE tests, not merely files living under
+// `tests/`. The looser rule counted golden files, fixtures and transcripts —
+// portfolio-optimiser's `tests/golden/demo-transcript.stdout` among them — and
+// a finding that says "you have tests a stranger cannot run" is false the
+// moment its subject is a fixture. Measured: 16 of 21 clones have a real one.
+// One alternative per family rather than one regex, because the shell-script
+// family needs a boundary the others do not: a bare `test` substring makes
+// `latest-release.sh` a test file.
+const EXECUTABLE_TEST_FILE = [
+  /\.test\.(mjs|cjs|js|ts)$/,
+  /(^|\/)test_[^/]+\.py$/,
+  /_test\.py$/,
+  /(^|\/)([^/]*[-_.])?tests?([-_.][^/]*)?\.sh$/,
+  /(^|\/)tests?\/[^/]*\.sh$/,
+  /selftest/,
+];
+
+export function countTestFiles(tracked) {
+  return (tracked ?? []).filter((f) => EXECUTABLE_TEST_FILE.some((re) => re.test(f))).length;
+}
+
 export function extractBadgeVersion(readmeText) {
   const m = /badge\/version-(\d+\.\d+\.\d+)/.exec(readmeText || '');
   return m ? m[1] : null;
@@ -1621,6 +1737,8 @@ export function inspectRepo(dir, name, register, description, catalogNames = nul
     changelogTop: changelog === null ? null : extractChangelogTop(changelog),
     tags: gitTags(dir),
     tagObjects: gitTagObjects(dir),
+    testScript: readTestScript(dir),
+    testFileCount: countTestFiles(tracked),
     catalogNames,
     forgeTagsSelf,
     releases,