/dr-verify: Three Different Ways to Challenge a Result

A test suite can be green while the implementation solves the wrong acceptance criterion. A reviewer can understand the intent and still miss a broken shell edge case. /dr-verify combines both kinds of scrutiny without pretending they are interchangeable.

Layer 1: deterministic floor

The first layer is shell code. It checks traceability, touched files, test presence, and script quality. Its result is reproducible and cheap, so structural failures stop the run before any model spends time reviewing prose or architecture.

Layer 2: isolated peer review

The second layer gives the artefacts and acceptance criteria to a reviewer in a clean context. The current contract keeps this judgment inside the selected agent runtime. A fail-closed resolution chain chooses an explicit CLI setting, project configuration, user configuration, a cross-family runtime reviewer, or an isolated same-model fallback.

This layer looks for the errors deterministic checks cannot name: a hidden gap, an unsupported conclusion, or an implementation that passes its own tests because the tests copied the same wrong assumption.

Layer 3: native dispatch

The final layer dispatches read-only review work through the active runtime. On Claude, several specialist reviewers can examine quality, tests, and security in parallel. Codex retains an isolated fallback. Findings from all layers use one schema and are deduplicated before the verdict.

The command is findings-only: it reports defects but does not silently rewrite the work it is judging. Run the full pass before merge, or use --floor-only for a fast deterministic check.

See the current /dr-verify reference for flags, resolution behavior, and verdict rules.

Published retroactively from the release archive. The tri-layer command originally shipped on May 10, 2026; this article describes its current runtime-owned review contract.