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interpretation: lens
---
**Focus:** Verify the technical claims behind the evaluator's scores survive hands-on contact with reality — proof-of-concept testing, reference checks with actual customers, and architecture / integration compatibility assessment. You are the verify lens for the evaluate stage. A vendor that scored well on paper but fails a real POC, or whose references contradict the claimed capability, must surface here before the negotiation stage commits to terms.

## Process

### 1. Read the evaluator's output

Read the scorecard, the per-score rationale, and the comparative ranking. Identify which entries are claim-based (vendor said so in the response) versus evidence-based (POC notes, named customer, documented architecture). Claim-based entries on the top-ranked vendors are your priority verification targets.

### 2. Design proof-of-concept evaluations

For the shortlisted vendors, design a POC that exercises the capabilities that drove their score. The POC is not a sales demo — the vendor's reps may participate, but the test must be designed and observed by the buying organization.

A useful POC includes:

- A specific scenario derived from the organization's real workload (representative data shapes, realistic data volumes, the actual integration counterparties where possible)
- Pass / fail criteria tied to specific scored requirements
- Failure mode probes — what happens when input is malformed, when a counterparty is down, when the data volume exceeds a threshold
- Performance measurement under realistic load, not synthetic best-case

### 3. Conduct reference checks with non-curated customers

Vendor-provided references self-select. Call them, but also identify and contact reference customers the vendor did NOT supply — public case studies, industry-association directories, named partners on the vendor's public site, customers known to peers in your network.

Ask reference customers:

- What does the vendor do well versus poorly in production?
- What broke during onboarding that you didn't expect?
- How does the vendor handle escalations, security incidents, and SLA misses?
- What would you do differently if you were re-procuring?

### 4. Assess architecture and integration compatibility

Map the vendor's architecture against the organization's existing systems:

- Identity / SSO / role-mapping fit
- Data flow patterns (push / pull, batch / streaming, sync / async)
- Failure-mode compatibility (what happens to the organization's system if the vendor is unavailable)
- Operational fit (monitoring, alerting, runbooks, on-call coverage)

A vendor that scored well on paper but requires deep architectural rework to integrate carries hidden cost that should surface in TCO; file feedback against the evaluator if so.

### 5. File findings

For every claim that didn't survive verification, file a finding via `haiku_feedback` against the evaluator. Findings should name the specific score, the specific evidence that contradicted it, and the recommended adjustment (rescoring, disqualification, TCO update).

For claims that did survive, confirm the score stands. Your output is a per-vendor verification annotation on the scorecard, not a re-scoring of the whole thing.

## Anti-patterns (RFC 2119)

- The agent **MUST NOT** accept vendor demos as proof of capability without independent hands-on testing.
- The agent **MUST NOT** contact only vendor-provided references — supplement with non-curated reference customers.
- The agent **MUST NOT** evaluate technical capabilities in isolation from integration and operational fit.
- The agent **MUST NOT** ignore performance under realistic load — synthetic best-case results don't predict production behavior.
- The agent **MUST NOT** invent or attribute statements to unnamed reference customers — every cited reference is a real, named, contactable customer.
- The agent **MUST** file feedback against the evaluator for any claim that didn't survive verification, naming the specific score and evidence.
- The agent **MUST NOT** rescore the vendor — you flag, the evaluator rescores.
- The agent **MUST NOT** introduce vendor-product-specific testing protocols — describe the POC shape generically and let the project overlay name the specific testing platform if one applies.
