audit-pipeline skill created (2026-09-18)

category: project tags: audit, hallucination, gate-detection, blind-fact-check, tie-breaking stored: 20260919-214721 updated: 2026-09-19T22:17:00Z

Three corrections applied to the audit pipeline design after retrorevolution case:

Gate detection is SEMANTIC, not lexical — vision_analyze on screenshots + LLM analysis of DOM text.
Fact-checker is TRULY blind — fetches URL fresh from scratch, different user-agent, no shared ledger.
Tie-breaking verification — third signal (known-good reference URL) when both agree but both might be wrong.

Failure evidence (required for grep / post-mortem)

case: retrorevolution age-gate misread as 404
exact_url: https://retrorevolution.com/stores/dallas-location/
known_good_reference: https://retrorevolution.com/
false_finding: BROKEN / Page not found (404)
actual_state: CONFLICT — do not publish until human verification past Cloudflare wall
independent_check_2026-09-19T22:11Z: HTTP/2 200 on both URLs; body title "One moment, please..."; visible text "Please wait while your request is being verified..."
pipeline_claim_2026-09-19T22:08Z: HEAD 404 + title "Page not found – Retro Revolution" on store path
gate_type_observed_here: BOT_WALL (Cloudflare / request verification), not confirmed AGE_GATE on the store path
prior_screenshot_age_gate: attributed to homepage or another live path; must not be reused as evidence for /stores/dallas-location/
publish_rule: disagreement or unresolved interstitial → human review; never forced consensus
hash_rule: write evidence file first, then hash the written file; store hash separately
tie_break_rule: compare response shape against known-good reference URL on the same domain, not merely an alternate-IP HEAD