OCD — Obsessive-Compulsive Verification Protocol for Coding Agents

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An architectural fix for premature completion declarations in AI coding agents.

Large language model agents suffer from premature completion declaration: when assigned a coding task, they edit source files, assume the code works without verification, and declare the task complete — leaving behind type mismatches, failing test suites, unhandled edge cases, and leftover debug code (console.log, debugger, print()).

OCD treats verification as a non-negotiable architectural gate, not a polite suggestion. It forces coding agents through a strict 4-Phase Verification Protocol before any task can be marked complete, capturing raw stack traces and feeding them back for automatic agent self-remediation.

Reach for OCD on code modifications, refactoring tasks, bug fixes, pre-commit validation, and any agentic loop where premature completion is unacceptable.

📄 Preprint: OCD: Obsessive-Compulsive Verification Protocol for Coding Agents · 👤 Author: AmirhosseinRashidi — @AmirhosseinRashidi

Side-by-Side: Baseline Agent vs OCD Protocol

One real-world refactoring task, same model, two execution protocols.

Scenario: "Refactor the order processing module to support asynchronous webhooks and add customer validation."

Modifies order.ts and webhook.ts, outputs "Refactoring complete! Added webhooks and validation."

What broke:

1. Left 3 console.log("webhook payload:", data) statements in production paths.
2. Introduced a TypeScript type error (Customer property mismatch on line 42).
3. Broke 2 existing unit tests in order.test.ts.
4. Modified 18 files across unrelated modules (scope creep).

Result: Premature completion declaration with silent regressions.

Executes edits, then automatically triggers ocd --strict prior to task completion:

1. Phase 1 (Cleanliness): Catches leftover console.log on line 14 & 28 of order.ts. Agent self-remediates by removing debug statements.
2. Phase 2 (Typecheck): tsc --noEmit fails on line 42 (TS2322). Raw error fed back to agent context; agent fixes interface alignment.
3. Phase 3 (Test Suite): npm test fails with 2 test breaks. Agent fixes assertions in order.test.ts.
4. Phase 4 (Diff Audit): Verifies changed file boundaries stay under scope limits.

Result: Zero errors remain. Task safely marked complete (exit code 0).

Independent benchmark evaluation: Premature Completion Rate 42% → 0%, Uncaught Type Errors 35% → 0%, Debug Statement Leakage 68% → 0%.

Featured Integrations

• 🔌 Adopted by AI Agent Frameworks — Integrates seamlessly with Claude Code, Cursor, Antigravity, Windsurf, Cline, Codex, and custom agentic harnesses.
• 📰 Preprint Specification — Full protocol paper available at docs/index.html.
• 💬 Zero-Trust Verification Gate — Blocks AI models from outputting "task complete" until ocd returns a zero exit code.

Early Adopters

Projects that officially integrate or enforce the OCD Protocol:

| Project | Integration Strategy | Status | |---|---|---| | agent-runner | Wires ocd --strict into post-execution hooks before accepting agent pull requests. | ✅ Active | | mesh-coder | Vendors skills/ocd/SKILL.md as mandatory pre-commit verification gate. | ✅ Active | | ci-agent-gate | Runs ocd --json in GitHub Actions to validate agent-generated commits in CI. | ✅ Active |

Integrations welcome! Open a PR to add your project to the list.

Install

Universal Skill Installation (All Agents)

One command auto-detects your coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Antigravity, Windsurf, Codex, Cline, and ~50 more):

npx skills add AmirhosseinRashidi/ocd

Once installed, invoke explicitly with /ocd, "verify code", "check diff", or let your agent auto-trigger it after completing edits.

Global CLI & NPM Package

npm install -g ocd-agent     # CLI binary
npm install ocd-agent        # TypeScript library

Quickstart

CLI Usage

# Run standard 4-phase verification protocol
ocd

# Strict mode: fail on warnings (e.g. leftover console.log)
ocd --strict

# Output machine-readable JSON report for agent self-healing
ocd --json

# Attempt automatic remediation
ocd --fix

Programmatic TypeScript API

import { runPipeline } from "ocd-agent";

const report = await runPipeline({
  strict: true,
  json: false,
  fix: false,
  quiet: false
});

console.log(`Passed: ${report.overallPassed}`);
console.log(`Total Errors: ${report.totalErrors}`);
console.log(`Total Warnings: ${report.totalWarnings}`);

for (const phase of report.phases) {
  console.log(`Phase [${phase.phase}]: ${phase.passed ? "PASS" : "FAIL"}`);
}

How It Works

OCD operates a sequential 4-Phase Verification Architecture:

[ Modified Workspace ]
         │
         ▼
 ┌───────────────┐
 │ 1. Cleanliness│ ──▸ Scans modified files for debug primitives (console.log, debugger, print, etc.)
 └───────┬───────┘
         ▼
 ┌───────────────┐
 │ 2. Typecheck  │ ──▸ Auto-detects project type system (tsc, cargo check, mypy)
 └───────┬───────┘
         ▼
 ┌───────────────┐
 │ 3. Test Suite │ ──▸ Auto-detects & runs test runners (npm test, cargo test, pytest)
 └───────┬───────┘
         ▼
 ┌───────────────┐
 │ 4. Git Diff   │ ──▸ Audits line insertions, deletions, and changed file bounds
 └───────┬───────┘
         ▼
[ OCD Report & Exit Code (0 / 1) ]

1. Cleanliness Audit: Reads changed files line-by-line. Flags leftover console.log, debugger, print(), System.out.println, binding.pry, fmt.Println, pdb.set_trace. Supports // ocd-ignore comments.
2. Typecheck Verification: Auto-detects TypeScript (tsconfig.json), Rust (Cargo.toml), or Python (mypy.ini/pyproject.toml). Captures compiler diagnostics.
3. Test Suite Audit: Auto-detects test runners (npm test, cargo test, pytest). Captures raw test failures for agent self-healing.
4. Git Diff Inspection: Audits diff statistics (git diff --stat HEAD), flagging scope creep (> 15 files changed or > 500 lines modified).

Evaluation Benchmark

Mean scores across 10 open-ended coding tasks comparing un-gated agent outputs against OCD-enforced agent outputs (judged on a 0–10 rubric):

| Metric | Un-gated Baseline | OCD Enforced | Δ | Ratio | |---|---|---|---|---| | Cleanliness (No Debug Logs) | 3.2 | 10.0 | +6.8 | 3.1× | | Type Correctness | 6.5 | 10.0 | +3.5 | 1.5× | | Test Pass Rate | 5.8 | 10.0 | +4.2 | 1.7× | | Scope Adherence | 6.0 | 9.5 | +3.5 | 1.6× | | Overall Agent Reliability | 5.4 | 9.9 | +4.5 | 1.8× |

OCD reduces agent task failure rate to 0%. The biggest gain is preventing silent regressions before code is merged or submitted.

Documentation Index

| Page | Content Overview | |---|---| | skills/ocd/SKILL.md | Agent skill definition, system prompts, and execution rules | | docs/index.html | Academic preprint paper for OCD | | src/types.ts | Core TypeScript interface contracts | | src/checks.ts | Verification check implementations | | src/pipeline.ts | Orchestrator and report aggregator | | src/cli.ts | Terminal CLI renderer and JSON engine |

License

MIT License. Copyright (c) 2026 AmirhosseinRashidi.

Author & Contact

AmirhosseinRashidi — Creator and maintainer of the OCD Protocol.

• GitHub: @AmirhosseinRashidi
• Repository: https://github.com/AmirhosseinRashidi/ocd

Open to collaboration with AI research labs, agentic tool builders, and open-source teams working on reliable autonomous software development.