verify-absence-claims SKILL.md skillA
verify-absence-claims from iamakbarsha1/whetstone is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add iamakbarsha1/whetstone/verify-absence-claims@git:20261024.d153ccePins git:20261024.d153cce in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- iamakbarsha1/whetstone
- Path
skills/verify-absence-claims/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 5
- Latest version
- git:20261024.d153cce, committed Oct 24, 2026
- First version recorded
- Oct 19, 2026
- Size
- 12,268 bytes
- Repository stars
- 4
- License
- CC-BY-4.0
Use when you're about to act on a "there is no X / none exists / not found / nothing handles this" claim — especially one from a delegated subagent, research handoff, or a teammate's summary. Positive file:line claims are citable and checkable; absence claims are only as good as the search pattern that produced them. Re-grep every "X does not exist" before building on it. Covers the other shapes the same weakness takes: a setting absent from one config layer while a higher-precedence layer…
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Verify Absence Claims
**Type:** Open-source — client-agnostic methodology, no project-specific detail.
**Created by akbarsha — https://github.com/iamakbarsha1**
Distilled from a case where delegated research reported "no independent
implementation of X exists" and the build then found several inline
duplicates — the negative claim was simply wrong.
**Licence:** Released under CC BY 4.0 — share and adapt for any purpose with
credit. Full text: `LICENSE` at the repository root.
**Feedback & Support:** If a rule here proves wrong or needs sharpening,
open an issue on the repository or contact the author at the profile link
above. If the problem is the agent not following a rule below rather than
the rule itself, that's an execution failure — acknowledge and correct it.
## The core rule
A positive claim ("X is at file:line") carries its own proof — you can open
the file. A negative claim ("there is no X") carries none; it's only as strong
as the search that failed to find X, and a search that used the wrong term,
scope, or spelling produces a confident false "none". Never build on an
absence claim you didn't verify. Treat every "X doesn't exist" as "X was not
…Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add iamakbarsha1/whetstone/verify-absence-claims@sha256:b8ea4663132bc695The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20261024.d153cce, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_c3zrrgm2imm2txpq)
1 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 5 versions of this file, between Oct 19, 2026 and Oct 24, 2026, about one every day.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| git:20261024.d153cce latest | 2026-10-24 | d153cce | 12,268 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20261024.3da343a | 2026-10-24 | 3da343a | 11,541 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20261019.5842640 | 2026-10-19 | 5842640 | 6,906 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20261019.b3a119b | 2026-10-19 | b3a119b | 6,906 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20261019.3e178a5 | 2026-10-19 | 3e178a5 | 5,958 B | A | view |
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (12268 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
iamakbarsha1/whetstone · 4 stars · license CC-BY-4.0 · pushed 2026-10-24 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_c3zrrgm2imm2txpq GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=iamakbarsha1/whetstone/verify-absence-claims GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/b8ea4663132bc695b3e20afb41f72f2d8aec555b647659ddc1c5a1edd9509896
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.