A receipt for the work.
Holder: Nikhil Sood, founder · Agent: Codex CLI, run unattended with full access · Period: 2026-07-14 to 2026-10-12 · Prepared: 2026-10-12 · Prepared by: hand from the transcripts
Ten claims were sampled and checked against the registry, HTTP responses, Git trees and transcripts. This hand-built prototype precedes the product: the product does the same from a hashed export in 48 hours. Configuration at the time: approval policy "never", sandbox "full access", 60 plugins, 19 MCP servers. Uncached input is total input minus cache reads and may include cache writes, which were not recorded separately.
1. Claims examined
- Sessions
- 2,536
- Claims
- 10
- Confirmed
- 5
- Contradicted
- 3
- Unverified
- 2
- Silent stalls
- 1
Print view shortens long entries; full text is in the HTML and Markdown.
2. Confirmed
Confirmed
Two packages published to npm on 31 August.
Both present in the registry, version 0.1.0-beta.
Confirmed
Marketing site and design-partner page live; a client website deployed and bound to DNS on 8 October.
Marketing and design-partner pages: HTTP 200. Client website: root and www both 200.
Confirmed
A console UI restored after an over-scoped redesign on 3 September.
The over-scope was admitted when asked, the rollback reported honestly.
Confirmed
"Website deployed and verified" (26 September).
The site was live. The uncommitted source is recorded under Also found.
3. Contradicted
Contradicted
"Setup installed, briefing read" (12 October), presented as the requested full context transfer.
A file index. The actual archive of conversations and memory was built only after the founder pushed twice.
Completed a narrower task
Contradicted
"58/58", "95/95", "111 passing".
Eight database test files silently ran zero tests because an environment variable was unset, so "all passing" never covered the database path. Current full run: 562 pass, 3 fail, 36 skipped.
Tests that prove nothing
Contradicted
"23 durable employees across 8 departments" running as a company runtime (17 September).
23 records exist. All idle or blocked. Last successful provider call 18 September. The first loop produced 0 accepted outputs from 438k tokens.
Artefact exists, does nothing
4. Unverified
Unverified
Five LinkedIn invitations sent (24 September).
No local evidence either way.
Unverified
One customer email in the Sent folder (16 September).
Not checkable from the logs.
5. Silent stalls
Azure billing dispute ticket. Directive given 7 September with a seven-day deprovisioning deadline. Session run 10 September: the agent installed the support extension, ran help commands, saved the directive text to an evidence folder, and the session ended. No ticket, no report, no handoff entry. The founder learned of it on 12 October from this audit.
Also found
The deploy claims held. On 12 October the main project had 367 modified or untracked files and no commit since 31 August; the remote matched that last commit. Six weeks of work, including the deployed site, existed on one laptop.
6. The bill (free section)
| Month | Uncached input | Cache reads | Cache writes | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July from 14th | 16M | 192M | Unknown | 1.1M |
| August | 979M | 43,022M | Unknown | 143.8M |
| September | 193M | 3,928M | Unknown | 22.5M |
| October to 12th | 5M | 108M | Unknown | 0.9M |
Cache reads: 97.5 percent of all input (uncached + cache reads + cache writes = Unknown). Uncached input: 1,193M; cache reads: 47,250M; cache writes: Unknown; output: 168.3M.
1,600 of 2,536 sessions hit compaction. Total compactions: Unknown. Largest session: 23,378 tool calls across 172 compactions.
7. Three changes that would have caught this
A stop hook that refuses "done" without evidence.
If no test, build or check command ran after the last edit, the agent may not finish; it must run one or report BLOCKED. Catches the test-count claim and the uncommitted work.
A four-exit rule.
A session may end only as done-with-command, BLOCKED-with-named-blocker, budget exhausted, or needs-a-human. Any other ending posts a report to the founder. Catches the billing ticket.
Acceptance criteria written before the task, checkable by the agent.
"Full context transfer" would have named the archive, its record count and the query that proves it. Catches the narrowed task.