An item gets marked done when it isn't. It was merged but never deployed, or "verified" by a pipeline run that was cancelled. Then you need stage 8. You can see it coming when others start relying on your status, or an agent updates status on its own.

The status values are fixed: proposed, ready, in-progress, in-review, merged, done, blocked, dropped. merged means merged but not yet verified in the target environment. done needs evidence from that environment that you can check. A system reporting its own success is not evidence. A green badge, an agent's summary and a status field are all claims.

The output is tools/verify_status.py. It reads the backlog table, checks every status against its evidence and approvals, and exits with code 1 if anything fails. The terminal on the slide is real output from the script. I ran it on a copy of the backlog template with one merged row changed to done. It reported "done without evidence" and exited 1. Run it in your CI pipeline and before publishing any status change. When it fails, fix the item, not the script. This is a Definition of Done, the agreed meaning of done, enforced by automation.

The process is the product

Index