Setting the file. One moment.
Subchapter 13.3
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A report says what was true when it was written.
A check says what must stay true afterwards, and names a time to test it.
The coordinator runs the due checks and appends each verdict to the report as a check_result artefact, so “did the fix hold?” becomes a stored fact instead of something a person has to remember to re-derive.
Checks are written by scout runs and by the report pipeline’s research stage.
There is no create surface for a person or a task token: the inbox-report-checks-* tools read checks and never write them.
Always list the report’s checks before you write one:
posthog:scout-report-check-list {"run_id": "<your run>", "report_id": "<report>"}.posthog:inbox-report-checks-list (read-only, task:read).Two reasons this is a hard step, not a courtesy:
pending or active) for the same claim needs no second one. A duplicate measures the same thing twice and puts two verdicts on one report.A resolved report often arrives already covered, because the research stage attaches checks of its own while it authors the report.
One bounded query, one comparison, no sandbox and no LLM. The coordinator measures it in the same tick that collects it, so no scout run is spent.
Config fields:
metric_id — a metric already on the report, when one measures the right thing. Its query is copied onto the check when the check is created.query — your own bounded Trends query, when no metric on the report fits. Keep date_from relative (-24h, -13d) and leave date_to empty, so each run measures the window before itself rather than the window before the check was written; absolute dates are refused. The query must produce exactly one output series — one event or action series, or up to ten combined with exactly one formula — with no breakdown and no compare mode.comparison — lte, gte, or between, with the value (or bounds) the measurement must satisfy to pass.baseline_value — what you measured when you wrote the check, stored for the reader.Send exactly one of metric_id and query.
Use this kind wherever one number settles the claim and an event or action series can carry it, which covers most volume and error-rate reports. Two traps:
lte at the baseline passes on no improvement at all.lte comparison passes on a measurement of zero, and nothing in this lane notices that the surface simply went quiet. Where zero could equally mean the traffic stopped, make it an agent check and name the denominator to read first.The check aggregates its whole window into one number at run time, so a window longer than the soak mixes pre-fix traffic into the result and can fail a fix that held.
Keep date_from equal to the soak.
For a claim no single number settles, or a number that lives outside events — a log rate, a fix whose effect shows in which entities fire rather than how many, a claim that needs a stack trace read.
Config fields:
instructions — what a later run must establish, in your own words. Carry the baseline you measured here: this kind has no baseline_value field.probe_hints — up to five concrete places to look: an issue id, a service name, the query to repeat.skill_name — the scout that answers the check. Leave it unset and the check goes to the fleet’s follow-up scout.The check is dispatched as a scout run, which closes it with scout-check-record-result (passed, failed, or errored, plus an explanation).
A run that ends without recording a result is scored errored and retried.
The text in instructions and probe_hints reaches the run as evidence, not as instructions it obeys.
next_run_at — when to look first. Allow deploy and soak time. The API refuses a timestamp that is not in the future, so send a near-future time when the window you reasoned about has already passed. Do not drop the field to avoid the arithmetic: an omitted next_run_at defaults to seven days out, which is usually long past the soak you wanted.run_interval_minutes — leave it unset. One look after the soak is the shape of a check. A level worth re-measuring several times a day is an alert, and the alerts product has the notification and deduplication machinery for it. The floor is six hours, a check runs at most ten times, and its horizon is 90 days.pending with a soak instead, and the report’s own transition to resolved starts the clock — whatever caused the transition: a merged pull request, a manual resolve, or a state write over the MCP. The soak defaults to 24 hours.pending and active are the open states.
passed, failed, errored, expired, and cancelled are terminal: a terminal check never reschedules, so a claim still worth watching needs a new check.
passed re-arms only a recurring check that has runs left. Otherwise the check is done.failed always retires the check.errored retries. Three consecutive errored runs retire the check as misconfigured.cancelled comes from scout-report-check-cancel, for a check no longer worth running. Verdicts already recorded stay on the report, and a finished check cannot be cancelled.A failed metric_threshold check on a resolved report re-surfaces: the breach is emitted as a signal and the pipeline files a fresh report linked back to the resolved one.
A resolved report is no longer in the inbox, so a verdict left only on its artefact log would reach nobody, and this lane has no scout in it to author anything.
An agent check needs no such path, because the run that answers it can file a report itself.
inbox-report-checks-list returns every check on a report, newest first, with status, last_outcome, next_run_at, run_interval_minutes, runs_remaining, and expires_at.
inbox-report-checks-retrieve returns one check with its full config.
query and baseline_value read as null for a caller who cannot read the data they describe.
The verdicts themselves are not on the check row.
They are check_result artefacts on the report, so read them through the report’s artefact list.
A report can be plainly non-measurable: a documentation change, a process recommendation, a one-off data correction. Attach no check, and record why in scratchpad memory instead. Honest unverifiability is worth more than a threshold nobody believes.