⛔ This skill MUST be read in full — not skimmed. Formal review gates depend on its workflow.
Skipping steps silently bypasses quality checks. Missing gates = undetected breakages.

Ontology: tortoise/docs/ONTOLOGY.md (v3.1, canonical) — fetch: gh api repos/daniel-ospina/tortoise/contents/docs/ONTOLOGY.md --jq .content | base64 -d (§5 = controlled vocabulary).

Epic Verification

Announce at start: "I'm using the epic-verify skill for pipeline verification."

Purpose

Final verification gate for the epic planning pipeline. Runs after epic-decompose produces all child issues. Verifies that the full pipeline output is coherent, complete, and ready for implementation.

Workflow

Step 1 — Artifact Completeness Check

Verify all pipeline artifacts exist:

• Strategy alignment decision (epic-align output)
• Research brief (epic-research output)
• Scope boundaries + high-level E2E tests (epic-scope output)
• Epic plan with all 8 sub-step sections (epic-plan output)
• Dependency-ordered issue list (epic-decompose output)
• Every issue has a review-gate pass record

Step 2 — Cross-Phase Coherence

Check for drift between pipeline phases:

Check	Source	Target	What to verify
Strategy → Scope	epic-align decision	epic-scope boundaries	In-scope items align with PROCEED decision
Scope → Plan	epic-scope boundaries	epic-plan sections	Every in-scope item has a plan section
High-level → Detailed E2E	epic-scope E2E tests	epic-plan detailed E2E	Every high-level test has a detailed counterpart
Plan → Issues	epic-plan sections	epic-decompose issues	Every plan section maps to ≥1 issue

Step 3 — E2E Test Alignment

Verify the test chain is unbroken:

High-level E2E (epic-scope) → Detailed E2E (epic-plan §7) → Issue test references (epic-decompose)

Check each link:

1. Every high-level E2E test case → has a corresponding detailed E2E test case
2. Every detailed E2E test case → is referenced by ≥1 issue
3. Every issue that touches a tested workflow → references the relevant test case

Step 4 — Review Gate Audit

Verify all review gates passed:

Phase	Review Gate	Status
epic-align	Strategy review	✅/❌
epic-research	Research brief review	✅/❌
epic-scope	Scope review	✅/❌
epic-plan §1-8	Per-sub-step reviews	✅/❌ (×8)
epic-decompose	Per-issue + MECE	✅/❌

Flag any failed or skipped review gates.

Step 5 — Final Decision

## Epic Verification Result

**Epic:** <title>
**Status:** READY | NEEDS FIXES

**Artifacts:** <N>/<total> present
**Coherence:** <N> issues found
**E2E Alignment:** <N> gaps
**Review Gates:** <N> passed / <total> total

<if NEEDS FIXES: list specific gaps and recommended fixes>

**Decision:** PROCEED to implementation | RETURN to <phase> for fixes

Review Gate

Dispatch a fresh-context reviewer via task sub-agent:

Review this epic verification for:

1. FALSE PASS: Are any "passed" checks actually failing on closer inspection?
2. MISSING CHECKS: Are there pipeline integrity checks not covered by the 5 steps?
3. CROSS-PHASE DRIFT: Read the actual artifacts and verify they're coherent — don't trust the checkboxes.

Return: NO ISSUES FOUND | ISSUES: <list>

Fix-loop until "NO ISSUES FOUND" or convergence; safety cap: 10 cycles (verification is auditing, not creating).

What Fails If You Skip

Skip	Consequence
Cross-phase coherence	Implementation starts with drift between strategy, scope, and plan — teams build different things
E2E test alignment	High-level tests written in scoping have no detailed counterparts — untestable acceptance criteria
Review gate audit	Skipped review gates discovered during implementation — "why wasn't this caught in planning?"

Integration

Called by: epic-plan (after epic-decompose completes)
Hands off to: Implementation phase (issues go to issue-workflow pipeline)
Input: Full pipeline output (all 5 phases)
References: parallel-orchestrator (review gate dispatch)

Continue following the workflow as mandated by this skill. Do not skip steps.