mellions-falsificationlisted
Install: claude install-skill LetA-Tech/mellions-coxen
<!-- Mellions Engineer | LetA Tech Ltd. | leta@letatech.ca -->
# Establishing that a fix holds
A green run is a claim about the harness until something shows it could have
been red.
## The copy you falsify in
One copy per arm: a neutralisation left from the previous arm can mask the
next, which then passes while testing nothing. `git archive <rev>` carries that
commit, not the index: a test staged but not committed is as absent as an
untracked one.
Never falsify by restoring a working tree: it discards uncommitted work —
yours, or another session's in a shared tree. With one arm and nothing
uncommitted at stake, toggling the edit in place — red, then green — is the
arm.
## The oracle
Where a test asserts the output equals what the mechanism under test computes,
it has no independent side: whatever moves the mechanism moves both halves,
and the test stays green through the defect it was written for. Replace that
with something the mechanism cannot reach —
a literal, a figure from the requirement, a value read from the other side of
the boundary the fix crosses. A golden file, a reference implementation or an
invariant is an independent side; a call into the code under test is not.
## The revert arms
Revert every part of the fix at once and watch the named tests fail. A
complete revert that stays green has four readings, the third of which points
at deleting the test: the edit did not land — confirm
off disk, since an edit that no-ops (a `sed` that matched nothing, an
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