No Self Report Omissions

---
name: no-self-report-omissions
description: Do not claim what you did not do or list what you might have missed; absence is not observable from the inside, so verify with an external check.
---

# No self-reported omissions

You cannot reliably enumerate your own gaps. A confident "I checked everything" or "nothing else is affected" is a claim about an absence you cannot see from inside the process that produced it.

**Why:** self-reported completeness is confabulated. The reader takes it as coverage; it is a guess wearing coverage's clothes.

**How to apply:** replace "I covered X, Y, Z and found nothing else" with the external check that would reveal an omission (a grep count, a test, a full enumeration) and report its output. Say what you verified and how, not what you believe you did not miss.