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+---
+name: verify
+description: Build, launch, and drive a local Honcho stack to verify a change at its runtime surface (the /v3 HTTP API and the deriver queue). Use when verifying a diff or confirming a change works in the running app.
+---
+
+# Verifying changes in Honcho
+
+## Prerequisites
+
+Docker Compose is the preferred way to run the stack — `docker-compose.yml` at
+the repo root brings up Postgres (pgvector), Redis, the API server, and the
+deriver worker together. If Docker Compose isn't available, the stack can also
+run directly on the host (see Launch below); you'll need Postgres with pgvector
+and Redis reachable, plus a `.env` with connection strings and an LLM provider
+key for any flow that hits a model (deriver, dialectic, dreamer).
+
+Working in a worktree? It carries neither `.env` nor `node_modules`. Copy
+`.env` from the main checkout (that's where the provider keys live), and run
+`bun install` in `sdks/typescript` if you'll run the full test suite —
+otherwise the pre-push gate fails on a phantom `Cannot find package 'zod'`.
+
+## Launch
+
+First check whether the stack is already running via Docker Compose:
+
+```bash
+docker compose ps          # look for api / deriver / database / redis
+docker compose up -d       # start it if not
+```
+
+A running stack is not the same as *your branch's code* running — check the
+CREATED column; the images may be weeks old. For verifying a diff, the cheap
+path is to reuse the stack's Postgres/Redis containers but run the branch's
+API as a host process on a spare port:
+
+```bash
+uv run uvicorn src.main:app --port 8901   # branch code, stack's DB/Redis
+uv run python -m src.deriver              # if the diff touches the worker
+```
+
+This avoids both an image rebuild and the port/project-name conflicts a second
+compose stack in a worktree would cause. Without Docker at all, run the two
+processes the same way against host Postgres + Redis (API default port 8000
+via `uv run fastapi dev src/main.py`).
+
+When reading server logs, note that with the main `.env` the telemetry emitter
+spams connection warnings at an unreachable endpoint — `grep -v
+telemetry.emitter` before looking for the real error.
+
+## Drive it
+
+Prefer driving through the `honcho-cli` skill; fall back to the SDKs
+(`sdks/python`, `sdks/typescript`), then raw REST against `/v3`, in that order
+when a method isn't available at the higher level. The `honcho-integration`
+skill covers how to use the SDKs.
+
+When a change updates endpoints or makes schema changes, verify across all
+three surfaces — CLI, SDKs, and REST — since they can drift independently.
+
+For LLM-path changes, the fastest synchronous surface is dialectic at the
+`minimal` reasoning level: send a couple of messages, then hit
+`/v3/.../peers/{peer_id}/chat` and observe the response.
+
+## Configuration
+
+Configuration is central to both driving the app and running tests: it's how
+API keys reach the server and how a config-related change gets exercised at
+all. Settings come from environment variables or files, with precedence
+env > `.env` > `config.toml` > defaults. To verify a configuration change,
+set the relevant option through one of these layers, restart the affected
+process, and observe the behavioral difference at the surface — the same
+mechanism lets you point provider base URLs, model choices, and timeouts at
+credentials and proxies you actually have.
+
+Two concrete levers: deep-nested settings (e.g.
+`[dialectic.levels.minimal.model_config.overrides.provider_params]`) are
+miserable as env vars — drop a partial `config.toml` in the repo root instead.
+And for load-time config behavior, `uv run python -c "import src.config; ..."`
+is faster than booting the server.
+
+## Test suites
+
+Three test types matter here. All run in CI, but they're also runnable locally
+with whatever API keys and configuration you have — Honcho's config surface is
+large, so options like per-agent timeouts and provider base URLs can be pointed
+at your own keys/proxies to exercise a change:
+
+```bash
+# Unit tests (pytest; spins up its own infra via fixtures)
+uv run pytest tests/
+
+# Unified tests — step-based end-to-end flows defined in JSON
+# (config hierarchy, multi-turn interactions, LLM-as-judge assertions)
+uv run python -m tests.unified.run
+uv run python -m tests.unified.run --test-dir tests/unified/test_cases
+
+# Live LLM tests — real provider calls, for testing specific backends.
+# Needs provider API keys AND model vars — without LIVE_LLM_*_MODELS the
+# tests silently deselect that provider. See tests/live_llm/README.md.
+export LLM_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=...
+export LIVE_LLM_ANTHROPIC_45_PLUS_MODELS=claude-sonnet-4-5
+uv run pytest tests/live_llm -n 0 --live-llm --no-header -q
+```