Recursive verification

recursive-verification

When to use

• A first attempt at a bounded task may be improvable by feeding the attempt plus an explicit critic verdict back into a corrective re-attempt — and the extra compute is justified by the task's value.
• You want depth (number of correction rounds) to be an explicit compute knob, not an open-ended loop.
• The shipped default (verification.recursive) is not off for the active host, or the user asks for an extra self-correction pass.

Do NOT use when:

• The task is trivial — a one-liner, a rename, a format fix. The loop's cost dwarfs any gain (the package's A/B bench measured ~11× tokens for a single wrapper pass; recursion multiplies that per depth level).
• The host already one-shots the task. On a strong host with no headroom a second pass only adds cost (see docs/benchmark.md: strong-host discipline lift is null).
• You are chasing model intelligence. This transfers a test-time compute pattern, not capability — it cannot make a model smarter than its weights, and it implies no comparison to any frontier model.
• Budget is the constraint, or verification.recursive: off for this host.

Goal

Land a verified result by running a depth-bounded attempt → critic verdict → conditional re-attempt loop, with depth as the only compute knob, every level budgeted, and the loop default-off until a benchmark gate authorises it per host.

Disposition (2026-07-28, honest null — TERMINAL). The recursive- verification benchmark resolved as a published null (no measured lift over single-pass verification; see docs/benchmark.md). verification.recursive stays default-off bound to that null; scheduled for removal at the next major unless external evidence appears first. This skill is NOT sold as a quality-lift mechanism.

The Iron Law

A CROSS-MODEL CRITIC NEVER RUNS ON THE SAME MODEL + CONTEXT AS THE ATTEMPT.
SAME-MODEL SELF-CRITIQUE IS A DISCIPLINE PASS ONLY — NEVER A CAPABILITY CLAIM.

Inherited from subagent-orchestration: same model + same context = same blind spots. A same-model self-critique at depth 1 is allowed only when explicitly flagged as a discipline (not capability) pass — it can catch a skipped step or a scope-creep, but it shares the attempt's blind spots and must never be sold as a capability lift. Cross-model recursion (a different vendor as critic) is the cross-vendor variant and obeys the Iron Law by construction (critic model ≠ attempt model).

The loop

attempt₀
  → critic verdict (accept | revise: <reason>)
    → accept            → done
    → revise            → attempt₁ (reads attempt₀ + the verdict as context)
      → critic verdict
        → … → depthₙ

Each level reads only the prior attempt plus the critic's verdict — never the full history — mirroring the read-your-own-output-and-decide pattern. Depth n is the tunable compute knob, hard-capped by verification.max_depth.

Deterministic stop conditions

The loop stops at the first of:

1. accept — the critic accepts the attempt.
2. max_depth reached — verification.max_depth (default 1).
3. verify-budget exhausted — each re-attempt is one budgeted unit per verify-budget; a required-but-unrun verification is a surfaced safety gap, never a silent pass.
4. No-progress floor — two consecutive attempts score identical on the deterministic scorer; further depth cannot help, so stop.

Stop conditions are deterministic so the loop can never run unbounded — there is no open-ended "keep trying" branch.

Settings

Configured in .agent-settings.yml; documented in agent-settings:

Key	Default	Effect
verification.recursive	off	off = inert; ask = ask once before looping; on = loop silently up to max_depth.
verification.max_depth	1	Hard cap on correction rounds. 1 = a single critic pass (effectively inert beyond one review) until a benchmark gate authorises more.

Ships off. The per-host shipped default flips only on a passing capability-axis benchmark cell (see Procedure step 4); an honest-null keeps it off.

Procedure

1. Gate on settings + task shape

Resolve verification.recursive for the active host. off → no-op. Confirm the task is non-trivial (above the verify-budget change-size floor) and that the host plausibly has headroom — skip otherwise.

2. Resolve the critic

Read .agent-settings.yml (subagents.judge_model). A cross-model critic must satisfy the Iron Law. A same-model depth-1 pass is allowed only when explicitly flagged as a discipline pass; surface that framing.

3. Run the loop

Run attempt → verdict → conditional re-attempt, counting each re-attempt against verify-budget, until a deterministic stop condition fires. Under verification.recursive: on surface depth + spend in one line; under ask, ask once before the first re-attempt.

4. Honour the benchmark gate

The shipped default is set by the bench:ab gate (orchestration-benchmark-gate, gateVerdict / resolveShippedDefault): on/ask only on a host whose capability-axis cell passed; off otherwise. A discipline-only lift does not authorise a flip — that question is already answered by the existing rules. Never flip a default without its own passing cell.

5. Report

Follow the output format. Never present a recursion result as a capability gain or a frontier-model comparison.

Gotcha

• Recursion as discipline duplicate — if the only lift is on the discipline axis, recursion duplicates rules the package already ships, at multiplied cost. Surface it; do not ship a redundant expensive loop.
• Unbounded loop — there is no open-ended branch; the four stop conditions are deterministic and the depth cap is hard.
• Same-model self-praise — a same-model critic shares the attempt's blind spots and tends to accept; treat depth-1 same-model passes as a discipline check only, never as independent verification.
• Cost surprise — depth multiplies the per-pass token cost; confirm budget before raising max_depth above 1.
• Strong-host no-op — on a host that one-shots the task, every extra depth level is pure cost; the benchmark gate keeps the default off there.

Output format

1. Depth reached — the number of correction rounds run, and which stop condition fired (accept / max_depth / budget / no-progress).
2. Critic pairing — attempt model / critic model (resolved), and whether it was a cross-model or same-model discipline pass.
3. Verdict — accepted attempt vs. handed back, with the budget spent.
4. Evidence — per-depth scorer/verdict trail, never framed as a capability or frontier-model comparison.

Do NOT

• NEVER claim recursion makes the host model more capable or "closer to" any frontier model — it is a test-time compute pattern, not intelligence.
• NEVER run an open-ended loop — max_depth and the stop conditions are hard caps.
• NEVER treat a same-model self-critique as independent verification.
• NEVER flip the shipped default without a passing capability-axis gate cell for that host.
• NEVER skip a required verification silently — surface it as a safety gap.

Handover

Task	Skill / context
Mode selection, the judge Iron Law	subagent-orchestration
Per-pass cost budgeting	verify-budget
Shipped-default gate mechanism	orchestration-benchmark-gate
Cross-vendor critic (different vendor)	ai-council
Completion evidence	verify-completion-evidence