Prompting harder does not fix this, because the failure is structural. The agent is not lying; it is answering the question you asked, which was “build this” rather than “build this and show me the check that could fail”.
The fix is a gate in front of the write tools: no mutation until the governing procedure is loaded and the proof is written down. Once that exists, the same model produces materially different work — not because it got smarter, but because it can no longer skip the step.
The fix, in four steps
- Recon before edits Read-only survey first: what exists, what is load-bearing, what must not change. Write it down before touching anything.
- State the proof before the first line One sentence: “done when this command prints this output.” If you cannot write it, the task is not ready.
- Gate the write tools Refuse write, patch and execute until the procedure is loaded. A rule in a prompt is advice; a hook is a rule.
- Attack the result Independent critics with different briefs, then a judge that scores them. “Works on my machine” is a finding, not a defence.
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