Verifying an Agent-Generated Page

Verification metadata is the agent's confidence signal. A page marked

`authoritative` was vetted recently by a trusted author; `provisional`

means AI-generated or unverified; `stale` means verified once but more

than 90 days ago.

When to use this runbook

After spot-checking a page, when the act of marking it verified is the

next step.

Context

`mark_page_verified` writes `verified_at = NOW()` and

`verified_by = <exchange author>` into the page's frontmatter. The

structural-index post-save event syncs the values to the

`page_verification` table, where `ConfidenceComputer` reads them along

with the `trusted_authors` registry to compute the effective

`confidence`. Trusted-author + recent verification = `authoritative`.

Either condition missing = `provisional`. > 90 days old = `stale`.

Walkthrough

The frontmatter `steps` are the canonical sequence. The trusted-author

check (step 2) is the most-overlooked: a verification call from a

non-trusted author still lands the timestamp but confidence stays

provisional.

Pitfalls

The frontmatter `pitfalls` capture the failure modes. Mass-verifying

without reading is the most damaging — once the signal is poisoned,

agents stop trusting it.