Verification levels

level	meaning	how
verified	the record in the system of record matches the intent	reviewed recipe or convention read-back compared fields
verified-custom	your own verify= function returned true	you decide what "verified" means
acknowledged	the API said yes — an id, a success status, a 2xx	nothing was read back
attested-only	recorded; nothing checkable	no id, no status, no reader
unverified	a check ran and contradicted the claimed result	surfaced loudly; the incident you want to catch

Rules that keep the ladder honest:

• A check that could not run (network error, missing id, unknown record) degrades to acknowledged or attested-only with the error in evidence. Only a contradiction is unverified.
• A read-back that finds the record but has nothing intended to compare is acknowledged with exists: true, never verified.
• Evidence carries ids, labels and field-level match results — never message bodies.

Coverage is 100 %: every action gets a level. Depth grows per system through recipes, the REST convention driver, MCP tool pairs, and your own checks.