references/verify.md

check and verify gates

Two assurance levels before shipping a report, plus the agent-adjudication worklist.

check — structural integrity

node scripts/ultra11y.mjs check --report audits/wcag-YYYY-MM-DD.md

Fails (non-zero) if: one of the 5 sections is missing, a cited criterion id does not exist in the active standard, an NA criterion has no justification, or the pass rate is absent. This is the baseline anti-hallucination guard. --quiet emits only the exit code; --json the structured list of problems. For a country pack report, add --standard <pack> so the right id grammar/registry is validated.

Semantic gate — check --report … --semantic

node scripts/ultra11y.mjs check --report audits/wcag-YYYY-MM-DD.md --semantic [--verdicts VERIFY.todo.json]

Fails closed if there is no adjudicated verdicts artifact (never green-but-inactive), re-runs the uncapped coverage check, and re-grounds every passing verdict against the cited source. --verdicts points at the artifact (default VERIFY.todo.json next to the report).

Applicability gate — check --report … --standard rgaa --in audit.json

node scripts/ultra11y.mjs check --report audits/rgaa-YYYY-MM-DD.md --standard rgaa --in audit.json

Re-derives the pack view from the audit and fails on any over- or under-projected NC — the RGAA applicability gate, so a pack report can neither drop nor invent a criterion vs the WCAG core.

verify — adversarial verification of non-conformities

node scripts/ultra11y.mjs verify --report audits/wcag-YYYY-MM-DD.md --semantic

Generates a worklist VERIFY.md + VERIFY.todo.json: one entry per non-conformity (criterion ↔ file:line ↔ cited claim), capped by --max-verify (default 40). For each entry, open the cited code and assign a verdict in VERIFY.todo.json:

• supported — the non-conformity is real;
• partial — real but the criterion/wording is imprecise;
• refuted — false (the cited element is actually conforming);
• unsupported — the cited element is not enough to decide.

In --semantic mode, explicitly confirm the cited snippet supports the non-conformity. The worklist-generation step also accepts --json (emits {mdPath, todoPath, count, items} so an agent can fill verdicts in-memory). Prioritise preliminary findings (SFC/library source, see references/false-positives.md): refute the ones the rendered DOM disproves. Then apply the gate:

node scripts/ultra11y.mjs verify --apply VERIFY.todo.json

The gate fails (non-zero) if any entry is refuted, unsupported, or unadjudicated. Goal: no fabricated non-conformity survives into the final report.

verify --manual — adjudicate the residual (judgment / needs-rendering) criteria

The AI agent decides the manual criteria itself, gated. Run from the audit's cwd (harvesting re-reads the audited source files):

node scripts/ultra11y.mjs verify --report audits/wcag-YYYY-MM-DD.md --in audit.json --manual --out .

This emits an ADJUDICATION worklist — ADJUDICATE.todo.json + ADJUDICATE.md, one item per residual criterion, pre-loaded with the engine's harvested evidence (every image's alt, every link's text + context, the literal colour pairs, control labels, the heading outline, ARIA state, tabindex, lang-of-parts). Fill each item's verdict (provenance decidedBy: "agent" recorded):

• C / NA — with a justification from the evidence;
• NC — with ≥1 groundable finding (file/line/message/snippet);
• manual — with a reason: "needs-rendered-dom" (decide via scan) or "undecidable".

Fold the verdicts back FAIL-CLOSED:

node scripts/ultra11y.mjs verify --apply ADJUDICATE.todo.json --in audit.json --out .

It rejects a null verdict, a C/NA without a justification, an NC without a groundable finding, a manual without a reason, or any uncovered residual criterion. Agent NCs become real agent:<sc> findings that re-render in the report's §2 and re-enter the verify worklist; report/prd re-render with the adjudicated statuses; §5 shrinks to only still-manual items.

Residual risk

After adjudication, only the criteria the agent marked manual (needs-rendered-dom / undecidable) stay in the report's "to assess manually" section — never mark them conforming without a recorded, gated justification (agent adjudication via verify --manual, or scan evidence for the rendering criteria).