Certified vs certified-looking

The distinction the whole method exists to draw. A certified-looking page has a checks panel, green marks, and a confident layout. A certified page can name the input that would have turned each of those marks red. Everything else, the panel, the marks, the layout, is available to anybody.

Principle 6 · Test that a check fires, not that it exists

Where does Certified vs certified-looking come from?

Principle 6 of the Kymira doctrine, Test that a check fires, not that it exists. Certified vs certified-looking is the name the doctrine gives to what that principle requires in practice.

What failure is Certified vs certified-looking named after?

The gate that certified the leak. A round-trip check blessing a board PDF that carried the build machine's temp path on every page.

What does it look like on a real file?

Click any check on Meridian's report and it names the two sides it compared and the input that would turn it red.

Not for

Not a claim that the numbers are always right. The claim is narrower: no figure is authored by a model, and errors fail loud and stale.

Nearest terms

Painted rowA check row whose verdict text is fixed in the template while the scan's real findings are...Doctrine gateThe mechanical gate shipped with the packs and run over a finished deliverable folder before...Unproven, computed, certifiedThe three states a figure can be in on a page

Last updated 2026-09-02 · Dylan, founder · one of 40 terms in the Kymira glossary, each one named after something we watched go wrong in a real build or in our own audits.

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