Measured 2026-09-18: nine ordinary shapes of a plan's `## Verification`
section parsed to zero criteria - an untagged fence, a ```text fence, a
markdown table, `## Verification (acceptance)`, `## Verification:`,
`### Verification`, an unclosed fence earlier in the document. Every one came
out as `0 of 0`, NOT OK, exit 1, and Phase 7 then forbade `result: completed`
without anyone being told that the FORMAT, not the code, was the problem.
"The section is empty" and "I cannot read this format" are different facts.
Three changes, one hole:
- The runner reports `NO_CRITERIA` with a source line (`plan.md:NN`) when the
section is there and nothing in it parsed, and names the two forms it does
read. Same for a brief's `## Success Criteria`, so the evidence block the
conformance reviewer gets says which of the two it is looking at rather than
showing an empty table.
- Phase 7 says it out loud instead of failing silently: report the source line
and the two forms, and say that the plan is what failed there, not the run.
- `/trekplan` now pins what it produces to what the runner reads: the heading
is exactly `## Verification`, the criteria are a bullet whose first
backticked span is the command or a shell-tagged fence, and the command must
be one the allowlist runs. A doc-consistency test holds the writer and the
reader together, so a runner that learns a new form must update the source.
Honest about the round trip: the two round-trip tests were GREEN on arrival -
the template already writes the bullet form the runner reads. What was missing
was not the format but the PIN: `/trekplan` mandated neither the heading string
nor the format, so a plan could satisfy the command's own instructions and
still parse to nothing. The tests now hold that.
Red first: 5 of the 7 new tests failed before the change (3 NO_CRITERIA, 2
doc-consistency); the 2 round-trip tests are guards, and said so above.
Suite 1161 (1159/0/2). Gate unchanged: defects 0 of 7, intact, exit 1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Kjell Tore Guttormsen
f90e1cf02d