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Lauren Tan says agents should verify their own work first

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Lauren Tan, writing as @poteto, says the basic agentic loop starts with verification, where agents run and interact with their app like a real user.

She says the goal is an artifact such as a video or screenshots that shows the work is correct, matches the intent, and is easier to review than the full PR. She adds that verification is an approximation and not every domain can be verified yet.

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@poteto

okay now that we're past that tired discussion, let's talk about how we get agents to write more correct code (note: this won't mean the code will be Good, but it should at least work)

this is the entrypoint into your most basic agentic loop: verification. it means giving your agent the ability to verify its own work, most commonly by actually running and interacting with it like a real user would. whether your interface is a cli/api/ui/whatever, you want to start here so that your agents can close the loop. if you want you can even have your agents model the problem in TLA+ and attempt to verify if you have things like state machine bugs.

the point is to give yourself confidence in the agents' work by them producing some kind of artifact that proves that 1) that the work is correct, 2) that it matches what you intended, and 3) is easier to review than reading the whole PR. most commonly this would be a video and/or screenshots for UI work.

everything else like skill packs are really bonus and optional, all you need is a way for your agents to verify their own work to start using them more autonomously. some caveats are that not all domains can be verified easily yet, and that verification is just approximation and can still be wrong. it's no different than trusting that a human actually ran the code they wrote and trusting it

so start here!

lauren@poteto
pstack now includes 2 skills i recommend everyone use or copy: /create-verification-skill https://github.com/cursor/plugins/blob/main/pstack/skills/create-verification-skill/SKILL.md /maintain-verification-skill https://github.com/cursor/plugins/blob/main/pstack/skills/maintain-verification-skill/SKILL.md if you don't already have one, /create-verification-skill creates a skill that teaches your agent how to run, control, and debug your app. it also creates something i call the feature map: a map of all the features in your app and how to get to it and use it from a user's pov. it allows agents to navigate and use the app just like a real user which greatly increases its ability to verify its own work. but of course, this feature map goes out of date very quickly. run /maintain-verification-skill as a daily automation with cursor cloud agents. this skill will check your app for changes and keep your feature map up to date. having a strong verification skill will end up becoming critical infra for your team and become the foundation of boosting everyone's productivity and quality and also enable more interesting automations to be built. install https://cursor.com/marketplace/cursor/pstack and you'll get auto updates for my skills. enjoy!
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Source: lauren · x.comPublished · added here