Verify the Fleet

A successful bootstrap is more than a running Pod. The exact checks belong to the released bootstrap procedure, but the observable outcome is stable:

• Kubernetes reports the intended First-Mate workload healthy.
• The Agent home is backed by the intended persistent volume.
• Herdr exposes the native harness session.
• The Mate can reach its reviewed PostgreSQL coordination boundary.
• Its loaded identity and Skills come from the intended release.
• No approval boundary was silently widened during installation.

Verify through native authorities

Use Kubernetes for workload truth, Herdr for session truth, PostgreSQL for durable Fleet truth and the Agent PVC for home state. A chat message that says “ready” is useful evidence only after these authorities agree.

For a development Fleet, also distinguish three revisions: the writable AgentOS checkout, the immutable image seed and the running image digest. Markdown or Skill changes need a safe harness reload; executable or image changes need a reviewed immutable image rollout.

If a boundary cannot be verified, report it as unknown instead of treating absence of evidence as success. The bootstrap Skill owns reconciliation from a partial stage.

Next: adopt one project or learn persistence and recovery.