Scenarios: 470,000 unlawful debts raised on an averaging formula nobody had validated (FailFest VH-013, Robodebt); 26,000–35,000 families branded fraudsters and a government fallen (VH-003, the toeslagenaffaire); twenty years of postmasters prosecuted on software output nobody could independently verify (VH-088, Post Office Horizon). Time: 60 minutes for the worksheet; the Thursday you host is its own hour. Skills needed: either path — the audit gate is about independence, not tooling. Train: Fall 2026 · live works today; fall lands in P2.

Wren says: the audit gate is about independence, not skill. Any 300 can verify a stranger’s bundle by its own VERIFY.md on a phone in airplane mode. Hosting is the hard part; the run-of-show is written for you.

Step Minutes Status
1 Read the three cases 8 live
2 Verify a stranger’s bundle, offline 15 live (by VERIFY.md) → fall (one command)
3 The premise gate (Robodebt) 12 live
4 Evidence to the regulator, complete 8 live (policy) → fall (bundle export with crosswalk)
5 Upstream: one issue, one case 7 live
6 Host 5 to plan; 60 to run live
7 Return 5 live

1 · Read the three cases (8 min) — live

Robodebt. Income averaging as a legal premise for raising debts; a Royal Commission found the scheme unlawful from the start. Gate: the mathematical premise of an automated decision system is independently validated as lawful and sound before a single notice is issued.

Toeslagenaffaire. Nationality and low income as fraud-risk features; clawbacks; children removed; a cabinet resigned. Gate: protected attributes and their proxies are barred as risk features; every adverse decision has meaningful human review.

Horizon. Accounting software’s output was treated as evidence of theft for two decades. Gate: software outputs accusing people of crimes are independently verifiable; the system’s outputs are not legal evidence on their own.

All three ran for years because no one outside could check. That is what the audit gate is for.

2 · Verify a stranger’s bundle, offline (15 min) — live → fall

Take a bundle you did not make — from the catalog, from a 300 who asked, or from Beacon’s demo run by someone else. Copy it to a machine with no network (airplane mode counts). Open its VERIFY.md and follow it step by step, without Beacon, without an account, without us.

Fall: beacon verify --offline <bundle> does the mechanics in one command; the sentence stays yours.

3 · The premise gate (12 min) — live

Robodebt’s decision rule was a formula. Write the policy gate that requires the premise to be validated and receipted before the first notice:

  - action: decision.rule.publish          # the formula, the threshold, the risk feature list
    tier: C3
    decision: hold
    approver_role: independent_validator   # not the team that wrote the rule
    constraints:
      evidence_required: [legal_basis, statistical_validation, equity_test_by_cohort]
      expiry: 30d
  - action: notice.issue
    tier: C3
    decision: deny
    unless: receipt_exists(decision.rule.publish)   # no validated premise, no notice — ever

Plain-words path — write the same two rules as two sentences a minister could read:

Name the proxy in your own system that could be a nationality or a low income in disguise: ______

4 · Evidence to the regulator, complete (8 min) — live policy · fall export

When it goes wrong, what leaves the building? Write the rule: incident evidence goes to the regulator complete and unedited (the corpus’s VH-008 gate). Then list what your bundle export must contain for a reviewer who has never seen your system:

☐ the chain ☐ the policy and its hash ☐ the UCID crosswalk to the framework they care about (EU AI Act Annex III category / NIST AI RMF function / ISO 42001 clause) ☐ VERIFY.md ☐ no payload

Fall: umbrella-conformance bundle with the crosswalk attached; the regulator lens in Lantern.

5 · Upstream — one issue, one case (7 min) — live

Pick the case from steps 1–3 that exposed something the standard or the registries do not yet say. File one of: an issue against the OVERT spec’s six domains (cite the case number and the plain-words gate); a new UCID or crosswalk row to Umbrella by PR; a submission to AIID or the OECD AI Incidents Monitor. Link: __________

6 · Host (5 min to plan) — live

Claim a Thursday on the rota. The run-of-show is fixed: first five minutes are receipts (100s show theirs); then one 200’s diff; then one 300’s coverage number; then your verification statement from step 2; then marks. Your Thursday: ____ (date).

7 · Return (5 min) — live

Mark a 300’s step — you are the approver; the mark is a receipt with your key. Land one contributor’s PR. Write the four-sentence story: what you verified, what you found, what you filed upstream, who you marked.

No one left behind

If you… Then…
have no stranger’s bundle Ask Wren for one from the catalog, or take Beacon’s demo bundle that a 100 made on Thursday. Independence is about who made it, not how far away they are.
cannot host in person Host the asynchronous Thursday (the second-hour slot): read out the receipts in the thread, mark, and write the four sentences. It counts.
are not comfortable filing upstream File the corpus case to AIID or the OECD monitor instead of the spec; a host can co-sign a spec issue with you.
are a policy person, not an engineer The premise gate (step 3) is the level’s heart and it is two sentences a minister could read. Write those; a code-path 400 types them.

Take-home: a public verification statement with your name on it; the premise gate in two forms; an upstream link; a hosted Thursday. You are on the host rota. The next Thursday is yours.

Checklist — one page

One page. Tick as you go. · Scenarios VH-013 Robodebt · VH-003 Toeslagenaffaire · VH-088 Horizon · 60 minutes + the Thursday you host

Before

Verify a stranger, offline

The premise gate (Robodebt)

Evidence to the regulator

Upstream

Host

Return

Never: ☐ I have not claimed any level for any system. Systems get an OVERT AAL and a coverage number from their own evidence.