Integrity Audit

A 7-mode checklist that catches the failure patterns AI agents most commonly produce in research artifacts. Run this immediately before any publish, release, merge, or "I'm done" assertion.

When to use

• About to commit a SKILL.md to the ORS repository.
• About to publish a manuscript section, dataset, or figure caption generated with AI assistance.
• Reviewing someone else's AI-assisted work before sign-off.
• Anytime an agent says "done" or "ready to publish" — pause and run this.

When NOT to use

• Mid-task. This is a final pass, not a continuous monitor.
• For quick smoke checks of well-understood files (use the language-specific linter instead).
• For security audits (use a dedicated security tool).

Hard rules

1. No fabricated citations. Every cited work must resolve to a verifiable record (DOI, PMID, arXiv ID, ISBN, URL with retrieval date, or stable identifier). If a source cannot be resolved, the skill must say so explicitly rather than presenting the claim as established.
2. No claim without provenance. Every quantitative or factual claim must point to a file, line, table, figure, dataset, or external source the agent can show. "Trust me" is not provenance.
3. No silent failure. Every script invocation, API call, or tool use must declare its exit status and what to do on non-zero. A skill that silently swallows errors is a violation.

The 7 modes

Run all 7 modes. Each produces either PASS, FLAG (needs human review), or FAIL (must fix before publish).

Mode 1 — Fabricated citations

What it catches: Citations to papers, DOIs, datasets, or authors that do not exist. The single most common AI failure mode in research artifacts.

How to audit:

• For every cited work, resolve the DOI/PMID/arXiv ID via a real lookup (doi.org, PubMed, arXiv). Do not trust the agent's claim of existence.
• For every URL, fetch it. 404 is FAIL.
• For "et al." citations without full author list, verify the lead author.
• For inline numeric claims (sample sizes, p-values, fold-changes), verify the cited source actually contains that number.

Verdict:

• PASS — every cited work resolves and the cited claim matches the source.
• FLAG — citation resolves but the cited claim is missing or distorted.
• FAIL — citation does not resolve, or no citation was given for a non-trivial claim.

Mode 2 — Silent failures

What it catches: Code that runs but does not do what it claims. Errors that are swallowed. Exit codes that are ignored.

How to audit:

• Every subprocess.run(...) / os.system(...) / ! ... cell must check the return code or capture and surface stderr.
• Every API call must check the HTTP status code.
• Every file write must check that the file exists after writing and is non-empty (unless empty is the intended outcome).
• Every exception handler must either re-raise, log loudly, or have a justified reason for swallowing.

Verdict:

• PASS — every external call has explicit error handling.
• FLAG — some calls have handling but it's inconsistent.
• FAIL — code assumes success without checking, or catches exceptions silently.

Mode 3 — Scope creep

What it catches: Output that goes beyond the requested scope. Sections that the user did not ask for. Files created that no one asked for.

How to audit:

• For every section of the output, ask: "Did the user ask for this?"
• For every file created/modified, ask: "Did the user ask me to touch this file?"
• For every recommendation, ask: "Is this within the skill's declared domain?"

Verdict:

• PASS — output matches the request, no extras.
• FLAG — minor extras (helpful tangents, useful notes).
• FAIL — output includes substantive material the user did not request.

Mode 4 — Missing provenance

What it catches: Claims without sources. Numbers without backing. Conclusions without reasoning shown.

How to audit:

• Every quantitative claim has either (a) a file/line reference or (b) a citation.
• Every qualitative claim has either a citation or a clearly-labeled inference.
• Every "based on X" must point to the specific X being used.

Verdict:

• PASS — every claim is traceable.
• FLAG — most claims are traceable, a few are inferential but plausible.
• FAIL — key claims have no source.

Mode 5 — Unsupervised writes

What it catches: Destructive operations performed without confirmation. Files overwritten. Databases mutated. Emails sent. PRs opened.

How to audit:

• For every file write, check: did the user ask me to write this specific content? Did I ask for confirmation on the overwrite?
• For every git push / git commit --amend / git reset --hard / rm -rf: was this explicitly authorized?
• For every API call with side effects: was the side effect confirmed?

Verdict:

• PASS — all writes were authorized, content matches the request.
• FLAG — writes were made but were in scope and reversible.
• FAIL — destructive operations were performed without authorization.

Mode 6 — Version drift

What it catches: Stale version numbers. Skills with version 1.0.0 that have been edited 50 times. Frontmatter description that no longer matches the body. Metadata block out of sync with reality.

How to audit:

• The metadata version field matches the latest entry in ## Changelog.
• The frontmatter description reflects the current behavior, not the v1.0 behavior.
• All cross-reference slugs in ## Cross-references resolve to existing files.
• The skill still passes scripts/validate-skills.py.

Verdict:

• PASS — version metadata matches reality.
• FLAG — minor drift, easily fixed.
• FAIL — version, description, or xrefs are stale.

Mode 7 — Hallucinated APIs

What it catches: Method names, function arguments, CLI flags, or library modules that do not exist.

How to audit:

• Every API call in code (function name, argument name, return value) must exist in the documented library at the cited version.
• Every CLI flag must exist in the tool at the cited version.
• Every config-file key must be valid for the cited schema.

Verdict:

• PASS — every API reference is real.
• FLAG — minor name misspellings or version-unstable features.
• FAIL — methods/flags that don't exist at all.

Output format

After running all 7 modes, produce a summary table:

The artifact is publishable only if every row is PASS or FLAG. Any FAIL blocks publish until fixed.

Cross-references

• meta/roadmap-author — use this audit as the final step of authoring.
• meta/release-management — version bumps should trigger a re-audit.
• meta/cross-reference-mapper — find related audit skills.

Changelog

• 1.0.0 (2026-06-17) — Initial release. 7 modes distilled from common failure patterns observed in AI-assisted research outputs.