Focus Receipt & Proof Gate

Decide whether a stated "focus" is a real, testable decision with a real agent launch behind it — or a planning placeholder dressed up as one.

Use This For

• Auditing a milestone's "current product focus receipt" before agents are launched against it.
• Checking a work order states real input, output, owner, and proof gate before calling it an agent launch.
• Catching an acceptance gate that would only prove a cached UI state instead of daemon/event truth after a restart.
• Verifying a focus receipt names an exit condition (Kill/Revisit Trigger) as explicitly as it names its entry condition (First Visible Proof).
• Gatekeeping the transition from binder prose to agent work order at any milestone boundary.

Do Not Use This For

• Deciding whether the wider roadmap should treat an item as planned work or an energy-driven sidequest (legible-roadmap-with-sidequests).
• Reviewing a PRD, prototype, or vibe-coded concept for missing product fundamentals like cold start or pricing (product-reality-reviewer).
• Accepting or blocking already-finished work against a personal acceptance bar (port-daddy-user-surrogate-pm-review).

Decision Model

flowchart TD
  A[Draft Decision / Now / Why-now / Evidence] --> B{Names First Visible Proof AND Kill/Revisit Trigger?}
  B -->|No| X[Reject: planning placeholder]
  B -->|Yes| C{Acceptance gate testable against daemon truth?}
  C -->|No, proves only cached UI state| X
  C -->|Yes| D[Draft work order: input / output / owner / proof gate]
  D --> E{All four stated?}
  E -->|No| X
  E -->|Yes| F[Launch the agent against the work order]
  F --> G[Re-check the proof gate from daemon truth after the work lands]

1. Write the Decision/Now/Why-now/Evidence quartet before naming any agent. now is the narrow slice, not the whole milestone; whyNow must beat every other candidate; evidence is an observed fact, not an assertion — see references/focus-receipt-schema.md for the full field-by-field contract from the binder's build-prescription chapter.
2. Name the First Visible Proof. The exact observable artifact — a screen, a saved event, a passing probe — that proves the decision produced something real, not a vibe.
3. Name the Kill/Revisit Trigger. The exact condition under which the decision pauses and gets re-litigated. A receipt with an entry condition and no exit condition is half a decision.
4. Write the acceptance gate as a claim rebuildable from daemon/event truth, per the binder's own rule that a proof "must survive relaunch from daemon truth, not from a cached UI model." Mark testableAgainstDaemonTruth: true only when that is actually possible — see references/proof-gate-vs-cached-state.md.
5. Convert the receipt into a work order stating input, output, owner, and proofGate explicitly. The binder's own gate: "if a proposed chain cannot state its input, output, owner, and proof gate, it is a planning placeholder, not an agent launch."
6. Audit both together with scripts/focus_receipt_audit.mjs before spawning any agent against the receipt.
7. Re-run the audit after the work lands. The proof gate must still hold from daemon truth, not from the receipt's original prose.

Output Contract

A launch-ready focus receipt carries:

• receipt: decision, now, whyNow, evidence, firstVisibleProof, acceptanceGate.{statement,testableAgainstDaemonTruth}, killRevisitTrigger, owner, reviewDate — all stated, none implied.
• workOrder: input, output, owner, proofGate — all stated for every chain the receipt launches.

Use scripts/focus_receipt_audit.mjs to audit a spec matching schemas/focus-receipt.schema.json and return { pass, score, findings, recommendations }.

Anti-Patterns

Decision Without Entry Or Exit Criteria

Novice: Writes a confident Decision/Now/Why-now, then leaves First Visible Proof and Kill/Revisit Trigger implicit — "we'll know it's working when we see it, and we'll know to stop when it's clearly not." Expert: A real focus receipt names the exact observable artifact that proves entry (First Visible Proof) and the exact condition that ends or re-litigates the decision (Kill/Revisit Trigger) in the receipt itself, not in someone's head. Detection: focus_receipt_audit.mjs fires no-first-visible-proof (critical) when receipt.firstVisibleProof is empty/absent, no-kill-trigger (critical) when receipt.killRevisitTrigger is empty/absent, and receipt-missing-required-field (critical) for any other missing required field (decision, now, whyNow, evidence, owner, reviewDate, or acceptanceGate.statement).

Acceptance Gate Tests The UI, Not The Daemon

Novice: Treats "the panel shows the agent as compliant" as proof — a claim a stale cache or an optimistic UI update can satisfy without anything real having happened on the backend. Expert: An acceptance gate must be restated as a claim that survives relaunch from daemon truth — rebuildable from backend/event state after a restart or reconnect, never from what is currently painted on screen. Detection: focus_receipt_audit.mjs fires acceptance-gate-not-daemon-testable (critical) whenever receipt.acceptanceGate.testableAgainstDaemonTruth is not exactly true (fails closed on missing, false, or any other value), and review-date-elapsed (high) when receipt.reviewDate has already passed without the receipt being revisited.

Planning Placeholder Masquerading As An Agent Launch

Novice: "Launch an agent for governance work" — no stated input, no stated output, no accountable owner, no proof gate. Sounds like an assignment; is actually a wish. Expert: Per the binder's own rule, a chain that cannot state its input, output, owner, and proof gate is a planning placeholder, not an agent launch — do not spawn it. Detection: focus_receipt_audit.mjs fires placeholder-not-launch (critical), naming exactly which of workOrder.input / workOrder.output / workOrder.owner / workOrder.proofGate is missing or empty.

References

File	Load When
references/focus-receipt-schema.md	Drafting or reviewing a focus receipt's twelve fields, or checking a milestone chapter's Goal/Tasks/Gate structure and the Agent count rule.
references/proof-gate-vs-cached-state.md	Writing or trusting an acceptance gate, or deciding whether a proposed chain is a real work order or a planning placeholder.
examples/expected-output.md	Need to see a placeholder-dressed-as-a-decision receipt audited, then the same receipt fixed and passing.
templates/output-template.md	Need a fill-in-the-blank focus receipt and work order template.
schemas/focus-receipt.schema.json	Need to validate a focus-receipt JSON payload's structure before auditing it.
scripts/focus_receipt_audit.mjs	Need deterministic scoring of a focus receipt and its work order.
agents/openai.yaml	Need a subagent descriptor for delegated focus-receipt/proof-gate review.

<!-- BEGIN BUNDLE INDEX (auto: index_references.py) -->

Skill Bundle Index

Every file in this skill, and when to open it. Auto-generated; run scripts/index_references.py --fix.

root

• CHANGELOG.md — Focus Receipt & Proof Gate — Changelog — - Initial skill creation - Core process defined - Reference files and deterministic focus_receipt_audit script added
• README.md — Focus Receipt & Proof Gate — Audit whether a "current product focus receipt" and the work order it gates state a real decision with real entry/exit criteria, a daemon-te

agents/

• agents/openai.yaml — openai (data/schema)

examples/

• examples/expected-output.md — Example Output: Focus Receipt & Proof Gate — Scenario: an agent wants to launch three GPUI agents on the Harbor Editor collaborative pane this week.
• examples/sample-input.json — sample input (data/schema)
• examples/weak-input.json — weak input (data/schema)

references/

• references/focus-receipt-schema.md — Focus Receipt Schema — Use this when drafting or reviewing a "current product focus receipt," or when checking a milestone chapter's Goal/Tasks/Gate structure befo
• references/proof-gate-vs-cached-state.md — Proof Gate vs. Cached State — Use this when writing or trusting an acceptance gate, or when deciding whether a proposed agent chain is a real work order or a planning pla

schemas/

• schemas/focus-receipt.schema.json — focus receipt.schema (data/schema)

scripts/

• scripts/focus_receipt_audit.mjs

templates/

• templates/output-template.md — Focus Receipt Template — Fill in every field before treating this as a real decision.

<!-- END BUNDLE INDEX -->